I Am Sam
by Sorrel
Summary: It's hell being the girl. But Sam makes her own way, come hell or high water, and there's plenty of the former when she reunites with big brother Dean, and remembers all of the things she'd thought long forgotten.  AU, DeanSam INCEST.
1. Chapter 1

**One.**

_Things are getting weirder  
At the speed of light  
Nightmare girl  
All this fever dreaming kills my appetite  
For love and restless nights_

--"Nightmare Girl," Aimee Mann

"Take Sammy out to the car. Now, Dean! Go!"

Dean clutched his baby sister to his chest, and ran.

**-----**

Sam liked playing pool. She was good at it- one of the few skills that her hunter family tried to teach her that she ever really picked up. Maybe it was because nobody died if she lost a game of pool. Or maybe it was because Dean had taught her, and not her dad. Even now, she could easily remember long-ago shooting lessons, holding her daddy's pistol that felt like it was bigger than she was, Dad standing behind her and correcting her aim, over and over again, always with this level, patient voice that drove her _up the wall._

If she was remembering the incident correctly, she'd turned around, slapped the gun into his palm, and stormed back to their hotel rooms, where her books and her soccer ball and Dean were waiting.

At least she'd remembered to put the safety on, first. Her Dad would have been a hell of a lot more pissed off at her if she'd accidentally shot his hand off instead of simply "shirking" her lessons. Like she'd ever wanted to learn how to fire a gun in the first place.

But learning how to play pool was different. Dean had started to teach her when she was twelve and he was sixteen, a two-year gap between the painful, frustrating shooting lessons and tracking lessons and hand-to-hand lessons that had never ended well, because Sam the _girl_ could never measure up to Daddy's standards or Dean's example. For some reason, she'd never held it against Dean, maybe because he'd always gone out of his way to show her the right way, patient in a way that didn't grate along her nerves like Dad's did, always doing his best to make sure that Dad didn't leave her behind, either literally or metaphorically. She'd never wanted to learn how to hunt, but by God she would keep up with her big brother or die trying, and he'd never resented her or made fun of her for it.

Well, much.

He'd taught her in a hundred different bars all across the country, not the trendy new clubs that throbbed in the heart of cities like canker sores but the old kind, where old men came in to have a drink and tell stories and parents brought their kids and Dean brought his little sister, big-eyed and lanky with her hair chopped short because sometimes it was just easier if she went out of her way _not_ to remind her dad that she wasn't, actually, a boy. At sixteen Dean had still looked ridiculously young and pretty- it wasn't until nineteen that he suddenly filled out and started looking like a younger, less grizzled version of Dad- but he was already charming enough that he could get a drink out of almost any bartender, and he'd always sneak a sip to Sam and talk about whatever pretty girl that caught his eye as he showed Sam the proper posture, the proper grip, the best way to calculate angles and shots, how to tell the difference between a gullible mark and someone who'd kick your ass six ways from Tuesday if you tried to hustle him.

Thinking back, Sam figured that it was probably her brother's fault that she was where she was. Because if he hadn't decided to start a running commentary on his sex life just about the time his libido kicked into overdrive, she probably wouldn't be standing here, dazed with dislocation and cheap beer, in the middle of a gay bar twelve blocks off campus with a pretty girl smiling across the table at her.

"Guess that's your game," the girl said. She was blonde, and just about Sam's height- she hadn't gotten the six-foot-plus stature of either her father or her brother. She'd thought it was unfair till she was old enough to be glad that she didn't stand out in a crowd.

"Guess so," she said. She laid the pool cue down on the table, then took in the inviting gleam in the girl's smile and dug into her pocket, pulling out another half-handful of quarters and slapping them down on the table. "Want to go another?"

The girl's smile widened, and she tossed her thick hair off her shoulders, revealing a long, slender neck that Sam wanted to lick. "I'd love to."

Instead, she fed the quarters into the table, and offered her own inviting smile back across the table. "Your break."

Jess leaned over the table, her form almost perfect. "I'm Jessica, by the way," she offered, and broke.

Not one, but two balls in the pocket. Even Dean would be impressed. "Sam," she said in reply, and settled down to watch with pleasure as her new friend started to run the table.

**-----**

There were things that she wanted to tell Jess, sometimes, in the quiet time of the night when thoughts crowded into her brain, heavy and unwelcome. Some of them were even hers. Some of them weren't, and some nights she would feel Jess tossing restlessly next to her, and she'd see fragments of dreams that she never wanted to know.

There were things that Jess wanted to tell her, too. She wanted to say "I love you," even though she and Sam had only been dating a few months, and she didn't even know Sam as well as she thought she did. She wanted to know more, though. She wanted to ask "Who made you the way you are?" and the answer was both at once so simple and so complex (Dean) that Sam's answer dried up in her throat, born dead as ashes in her mouth before it could reach her tongue.

_I was fifteen when I gave my first blowjob,_ Jess thought, _and it was to my older brother,_ and Sam flinched away from the thought like it was poison, hiding in the library for hours after with her books open in front of her, not reading a word. She got a hold of herself and came home later, bringing cookies in a bakery bag as a white flag, and Jess never asked her what drove her away.

If she'd been anyone else, she might have replied in kind, offered her own confession as balm to heal Jess's wounds. But she wasn't anyone else, and she couldn't tarnish her memories that way. Because Jess's nightmares were a swirling mass of red and black, and an unshaven face with dark, bloodshot eyes, staring down at her while one hand cinched itself cruelly tight in her pretty, pretty hair, and she couldn't taste the cock in her mouth past the blood.

Sam remembered her first time. She and Dean had been lying on a motel bed, somewhere in the Midwest. It had been summer, and the sun had been streaming in past the half-closed curtains, heating the cheerful yellow sheets to a buttery warmth. Dean had been sprawled out on his back, half-sitting up against the headboard, and Sam was settled between his thighs, slowly licking at the head of the cock in front of him with all the hesitant curiosity of any fifteen-year-old girl giving a blowjob for the first time. Dean's left hand was knotted in the sheets, his knuckles turning white, but his right was cradled around her jaw, impossibly large, impossibly tender.

Sam already left the real thing behind once. She refused to double the betrayal by leaving behind her memories of her brother, too.

**-----**

For the vast majority of her twenty-two years here on this Earth, Dean had been the only thing in Sam's life that really mattered. She was always the odd one out in the unbalanced triangle of the Winchester family- the only girl, the only bookworm, the only one who didn't care about hunting, the only one that wanted a normal life. The only one that made waves. At the head of the triangle was their father, who ruled their little clan with a quiet sort of determination fueled by whiskey and vengeance, and right under him was Dean, the good soldier, the good son. It wasn't that Dad didn't care about her, or even love her, as far as the limits of his own heart would let him, but it was easier for him to put his love into the son that looked and acted like him, instead of the rebellious daughter in a warrior family with her mother's eyes. John Winchester had vowed to never love another woman. Apparently, that included his daughter, though Sam doubted he'd ever realized it.

For a long time she wished that things were different, but when was fourteen, trembling on the cusp of fifteen and what she thought at the time was adulthood, Dean kissed her for the first time, and that was the last day that Sam thought of her father as "Daddy."

She had someone else to love now, and Dean had always, always loved her back.

**-----**

She knew it was coming before it happened. It was like the smell of a storm, looming just over the horizon. Like the ominous warning rumbles of thunder, nightmares exploded into her sleeping hours with lightning-fast intensity, crystal-clarity that she could not, would not, ignore.

Her friends celebrated her academic triumph- higher scores than she'd had any right to expect, especially considering her patchwork high school education. But she knew more about the damage that could be done to the human body than a lot of doctors ever saw, and she'd already secured her interview for Monday morning, bright and early. She had no doubt that she'd be accepted into med school. All she had to do was show up.

She sat back in the midst of the seething revelry, nursed her drink, and tried to figure out how to get her and Jess out of town.

It wasn't really a surprise when Dean showed up. Like the lurking disaster, she'd felt him coming from miles away. She didn't know that Dad was missing, though. That was an unpleasant shock.

Nonetheless, it gave her the escape hatch she needed. She made Dean wait in the car and made Jess promise her that she'd stay with friends and packed her things and joked off her worry and came home early Sunday morning to cookies on the counter and the dawning realization that if she'd been two hours earlier, then Jess would still be gone and this wouldn't be happening. Her nightmare wouldn't be coming true.

If she hadn't followed Dean, if she hadn't gone right out that door like she'd just been waiting for an excuse, then Jess wouldn't have died. For all of her psychic gifts, she'd ultimately fallen to a very human weakness- she'd loved her brother more than her lover, and her lover had paid the price.

**-----**

Dean pulled her out of the fire, and held her after, cradling her smaller frame to his larger one like he hadn't since she was eighteen and walking out the door because no white picket fence in the world was big enough to hold a man like Dean Winchester. She twisted the front of his t-shirt in her fists and cried into his shoulder like she hadn't since standing in line to board the bus and watching Dean drive off because if Sam was going to leave him, then by God Dean was going to leave her first. And when her tears were all gone, she pushed him off and walked away.

Four days till the funeral meant three long nights, curled up in the overstuffed armchair because Dean hadn't thought to get a room with two beds. After the first night and the chair that had gone skidding across the room and painfully against his shins when Dean had tried to cross the distance between them, Dean had gotten the hint.

Four days and three long nights, and it wasn't until after the funeral that Sam spoke her first words to Dean since he'd pulled her out of the flames-

"We have work to do."

Dean didn't say anything. He just got in the car, and drove.


	2. Chapter 2

**Two.**

_Hello, good morning, how ya been?  
Yesterday left my head kicked in  
I'm learning to breathe, I'm learning to crawl  
I'm finding that you and you alone can break my fall  
--_"Learning to Breathe," Switchfoot

She had always been able to find Dean.

"How are we going to find them? They just- vanished, that- _thing_ took them, we're never gonna get them back-"

The kid was almost hyperventilating. Sam wanted to smack him, make him shut up for just _one fucking second_ so she could concentrate. But Dean's voice rang loud in her ear, telling her that this was why he kept hunting, this was how he kept going- _saving people, hunting things, the family business-_ and Jesus, Dean, what a time to hit her with a whammy like that. She knew he cared about the people they saved, of course he did, but she'd never heard him lay it out like that, his priorities, _one-two-three,_ with the family listed last. She wondered if he'd've said the same thing four years ago, before she left on her crusade for a normal life that didn't involve him, and left him alone with Dad. Before his family had let him down. She decided that she should probably stop wondering about things that she couldn't change and try her hand at, say, finding her brother and saving him from being eaten alive from a centuries-old cannibalistic monster.

Of course, to do that, she had to focus, which was a little hard to do with the kid twittering away in her ear. "Listen, we'll find them, okay? And your brother, too. We're going to get them out of there and kill that son of a bitch."

The kid scowled at her, obviously not believing a word she was saying, and she sighed. She'd been good at this, once upon a time. Obviously her skills had gotten a bit rusty, spending the last four years only hauling them out to convince her professors to accept a late paper here and there instead of asking people to believe the impossible. "Listen, your sister looked like she could take care of herself, and I _know_ Dean can. I'm not exactly new at this, either. Just- give me a second, okay? And then we'll get them back."

He wasn't listening. Instead he was casting around the ground, scuffing here and there with the toe of his hiking boot until he seemed to find what he was looking for. With a triumphant "hah!" he bent over and picked it up. Something green glinted between his fingers.

It was an M&M.

"They went this way!" he said, all irritability gone and hope restored. Sam sighed.

"Kid, didn't you see the way he was scarfing down those things? We'll be lucky if the trail lasts ten yards."

The kid- Ben, he had a name and it was Ben, that was kind of the point Dean had been trying to make- glared at her again with renewed intensity, like she'd just announced she liked to kill puppies and kittens in her spare time. "So what's _your_ great plan, then?"

She held up one finger to make him shut up, which miraculously worked, and cast about in her head for the bright, pulsing spot that always meant Dean. Almost without thinking, she turned till her pointing finger was aimed due West.

"That way," she said.

"That's what _I_ said," Ben grumbled, holding the M&M like it was some kind of talisman, but Sam wasn't listening. She knew where Dean was now. Hesitantly- it had been a long time since she'd had to do this- she tweaked at the thread that connected them. It twitched, them firmed into a thick, strong cord. Yeah.

"Let's go," she said, and started walking, Ben a beat-and-a-half behind her.

**-----**

Sam waited till they were a safe distance away before he brought it up. "'Zeppelin rules?'" she repeated.

"It's a very important part of this kid's education, Sammy," Dean said with all seriousness. "Who knows what kind of music that chick might expose him to. You have to get to 'em early."

"Yeah, that worked so well with me," she said, rolling her eyes. "And Dean? 'That chick' is his mother. She's allowed to expose him to whatever music she wants."

"Not if it sucks," Dean said firmly. "There should be rules somewhere. Parenting rules, about what kind of things parents are allowed to listen to when around their kids."

"Yeah, well, I don't think it'll matter much _what_ she likes, since all that kid is every going to listen to is mullet rock. For the _rest of his life._"

"I can't help it if Lucas has taste."

"Yeah, and the fact that he thinks you can walk on water has _nothing_ to do with it." Not that she blamed him. Dean liked to pretend that he was crap with kids- like how he'd pretended he couldn't even come up with a name, back when she'd asked him- but that was total bullshit. Dean was _great_ with kids. Just look what he'd done with Lucas- not only had he connected with the boy in a way no one had been able to since the accident, he'd been more worried about one single worried look than he had about an irate cop on his ass, and he'd been right. If Dean hadn't turned back, Andrea would be dead right now, and Lucas probably wouldn't be far behind.

And she couldn't exactly dismiss the fact that Dean had been the one to find him. Sam was a better swimmer, had _always_ been a better swimmer, but she hadn't found Lucas on the murky lake bottom, Dean had. Watching him surface with the boy in his arms had sent a shiver down her spine. Every once in a while, Dean would connect with someone on a level that was eerie, almost psychic. Sam had always been first on that list, with Dad a distant second. Lucas had clearly made the cut, one way or another, though whether it was because of Dean's, whatever it was, or Lucas' own latent psychic talent, or some weird hand of fate guiding both of them, Sam didn't know. All she knew is that she'd gotten off that dock as fast as possible, and she'd been thinking about things better left alone ever since.

"Again, I can't help it if the kid has taste."

"Oh, you _wish._"

"Oh, but I do, Sammy. I so do."

Dean got a vasectomy when he was twenty-one years old. She was seventeen at the time, just starting her senior year in high school, and it was the year they'd stayed in one place because Sam had finally put her foot down and Dean had backed her up when Dad had given her that thunderous frown. By that point, they'd been having sex, real sex, for about four months. And like a fucking idiot, she'd never once given a thought to the consequences of what she was doing. Yeah, she was on the pill and everything (Dad had taken her to the doctor himself when she was fifteen, despite the fact that she'd shown no signs of being the whore that Dean had been for years) and they'd always used condoms, but the possibility had always been distant, not-quite-real. She should've known better.

Dean had. He went out one day without telling her and came back three days later in a black mood and avoided her for a week. She picked up the knowledge of what he'd done on day two, because he was thinking so loudly she caught the broadcast even on the extremely staticky tuner that was her brain, and it had been like a bucket of cold water right over her head. That was when it finally sunk in- she was sleeping with her brother, and getting pregnant was about the worst possible thing that could happen to her in those circumstances, and Dean had recognized that risk when she hadn't and gone to extremely permanent lengths to make sure that wouldn't happen.

It was probably the moment when the nascent seed that would eventually grow into a college application took root. Sometimes, all you need is a wake-up call. She'd never been able to decide whether she regretted hearing that one or not.

"Don't think I didn't see you blushing back there," she said finally, just to distract herself from her thoughts.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said blandly. "I don't blush."

"Dude, you've got freckles," she pointed out. "Trust me, I can see it when you blush, and you were blushing."

"I was not."

"Because Andrea kissed you on the cheek," she continued with relish.

"You're totally wrong here."

"I dunno Dean, maybe we should've stuck around a little while longer," she teased. "You might have gotten somewhere."

He shot her an unreadable look out of the corner of his eye, and she went still from the intensity of it. But, "No, thanks," was all he said, before refocusing his attention on the road.

She let out a soft breath. The problem with Dean was that he didn't know how to give up. He could outwait the Second Coming, if he thought he'd eventually get what he wanted. And what he wanted? Wasn't Andrea. Sam knew that better than anyone. And while he might fuck some anonymous barfly, just to get his rocks off and get a little release, he wouldn't even do that if she wasn't still insisting on double beds, and he'd never go after someone he actually liked. He'd consider it cheating.

It was hard to believe, Sam thought, but the truth was that Dean was perfectly capable of being faithful. He'd been faithful to her for years. He wasn't likely to stop now, just because some pretty mother smiled the right way and kissed him on the cheek.

She wanted to think that her emotional reaction to that was sadness, because at some point they'd have to have a talk and eventually Dean was going to get over this. (Like that was even possible. She couldn't even think it with a straight face.) But she knew that her first reaction, knowing that Dean didn't want Andrea or anyone else for that matter, was relief.

**-----**

"I'm sorry."

Dean was carefully not looking at her, seemingly focusing his entire attention on the road, but Sam knew he was watching her out of the corner of her eye. "Sorry for what?" she asked, though she knew what he was talking about. "Sorry for getting yourself taken by that shifter like a dumbass?"

Dean scowled at him. "No. You got kidnapped too, remember?"

"Yeah, 'cause he looked like _you._"

Dean waved that away. "Whatever. Anyway, I was _trying_ to say, I'm sorry you couldn't stay."

Sam looked over at him sharply. "It was my choice, Dean."

"Yeah." Dean didn't look happy, and she knew that he was thinking about the last time she'd made a choice to stay or go, and which one she'd chosen. He was probably thinking that she was going to take off again, when they'd finally killed the demon. She still wasn't entirely sure he wasn't right. "But I wish it didn't have to be like this, you know? I wish you could just be little Miss Mary Jane College, go to classes, get a real job." His hands tightened on the steering wheel. "You know, all the stuff you want."

Sam studied his profile, the way his eyes tightened back into themselves into a wince, the downturn of his mouth. The shifter may have been a murderous, psychotic copycat who molded itself into other men out of some bizarre inferiority complex, but there was little doubt in her mind that its psychic gifts were real, that it had reached into Dean's soul and pulled out every ounce of bitterness. The shifter may have used her brother's words from her brother's mouth as a weapon, but that didn't mean they weren't true.

_You don't think I had dreams of my own?_

Dean had never told her. She could argue that she knew him better than any other human being on the planet, probably including himself, but she hadn't known that. He'd never told her that he wanted something more than the life he had. Or was that what he meant? If she'd asked him to go with her, would he have followed her? Probably not, but her heart pounded faster at the very thought. She'd always thought that she'd had to leave Dean for their own good, but if there'd been even a possibility that he could leave with her… Where would they be right now?

_See, deep down, I'm just jealous. You got friends. You could have a life. Me? I know I'm a freak. And sooner or later, everybody's gonna leave me._

Probably not right here, with Dean wary and her exhausted. It had been hard, seeing Becca and Zach again. They'd been two of her first friends at Stanford. She'd even had a little bit of a crush on Zach, those first few months, and Jess had teased her about it incessantly. Not that she'd ever told anyone else.

(She would have told Dean, if he'd been there.)

And Dean kept watching her, like she was going to jump out of the car and run back to Stanford, like she was so desperate to get away from him she was just looking for an excuse. She wasn't; at this exact moment she couldn't even imagine what it would be like to turn around and go back to a life that didn't include danger, and hunting, and her brother, but she didn't blame Dean for thinking that. He'd seen firsthand how close she still was to all her old friends, people that he'd never even met, people he hadn't even known existed until this case. He'd gotten a taste of the life she'd lived happily for four long years, while he was with Dad, or on his own. He knew what she was turning away.

And he knew that she was keeping secrets. Not to her friends, fuck if he cared about her lying to them, but from _him._ She'd admitted as much, not two weeks ago, and he'd been tense around her ever since. She knew the source of his worry- the last time she kept a secret from him, it was when she got accepted to Stanford- but she couldn't bring herself to tell him the truth. That all her little gifts, the added quirks Dean had accepted part and parcel with the usual hormones of her puberty, were changing, getting bigger. She'd dreamed the future and it had come true, and that nightmare was something that she couldn't admit to anyone, not even her brother. Not even herself.

"Well, I never really fit in," she said instead. "Guess I'm just a freak." Truer words.

"Well, I'm a freak too. I'm right there with you, all the way."

"I know," she said, and smiled.

**-----**

"Hey."

Sam nearly jumped out of her skin. She'd been paying such close attention to the Reverend's house that she hadn't even noticed the Reverend's daughter come up beside him. "Uh, hey."

"I saw you from upstairs. What are you doing here?"

Sam was suddenly really glad that she'd made Dean go dig up the grave. Dean would have looked _really_ sketch sitting outside of this girl's home. Sam could usually get away with this kind of stuff, because she was pretty and a girl and therefore seemed kind of vaguely harmless.

"I'm just keeping an eye on the place. I was worried."

She arched an eyebrow, looking for a moment like Jess or 'Becca or any one of the dozens of female friends Sam had had in college instead of the pious preacher's daughter. "About me?"

"Yeah." She shrugged, trying to project embarrassed innocence. "Sorry."

"Nah, don't be." Her expression went skeptical. "Although I'm not sure what you were planning to do, if something did happen."

Sam sighed and longed for her gun. Even Dad hadn't ever figured out how to load salt into a pistol, and a shotgun would be a wee bit conspicuous on a stakeout, so she was essentially unarmed. Not that she would have let this girl see her weapons if she had them. "I know I don't look like much-" five-foot-_fucking­_-five, and you'd better believe it'd been a pain in her ass for most of her teenage years, when Dean hadn't been shy about very literally holding it _over_ her, "-but I do know what I'm doing. I could have helped."

"If you say so." Lori settled down onto the bench next to her, so she must have been believed her at least a little bit. Either that, or she didn't think she was in any real danger.

Her next words dispelled that idea. "You probably shouldn't be around here, though. Around me, I mean."

She was right, but dollars to donuts she didn't know why. Sam wanted to know her reasons. "Why would you say that?"

"It's like I'm cursed or something. People around me keep dying."

"I know how you feel," Sam said. The difference was, she knew what was killing the people she loved, and she seemed to have some ability to know when and how it was coming. Lori didn't. What must it be like, knowing that something other than human was out there and hunting the people around you, and not having any idea where it would strike next? Would it take her father? Her?

Sam had to catch a breath at the thought of the demon taking Dean. There was no reason to think that it would be after her brother, but then there was no apparent reason that it would take her mother and her girlfriend, either. The only common point between the two was that they'd both been loved by one Samantha Winchester. And Dean, no matter how complicated things were between them, was absolutely number one on that list.

**-----**

The hot water felt good on her bruised and abused skin, washing away the gritty aftermath of yet another near-death experience at the hands of yet another psychotic ghost. Christ, she'd _wanted_ to go back on the road? What had she been thinking?

She'd been thinking about vengeance, plain and simple. She'd wanted to hunt that son of a bitch demon down and kill it for what it had taken from her.

Heh. If she was a guy, she'd've accused herself of thinking with her dick.

Aware that she was maybe just a little loopy on sleep deprivation and painkillers, she laughed at herself a little as she wincingly raised her arms to wash her hair. Dean had tried to talk her out of a shower, but when she'd just stared at him, he'd given in and wrapped her left arm up good and tight with extremely classy black trash bags and copious amounts of surgical tape to keep the cut dry. It had been a pain in the ass, and he'd griped about it the whole time, but it was oh, so worth it for the chance to feel clean again.

Unbidden, the visceral pleasure from the hot water changed into something else, went a lot deeper than just her skin. She felt it in the pit of her stomach- heat, and a sort of quivering tightness. Her nipples tightened; her pussy ached.

Amused at herself, she rinsed out her hair and started scrubbing down with soap and a washcloth. Even that felt good, the nubby material pleasantly rough against her skin. Well, this wouldn't be the first time this had happened. Adrenaline fed easily into arousal, and it wasn't unusual for it to wait until after all the excitement was over before it hit. It hadn't happened since she'd gotten back on the road, though. Maybe this was a sign that her brain was finally waking up from the fog of grief that she was just now starting to realize she'd been in.

Either way, she knew exactly how to take care of it. She'd have to be careful, though, because Dean was just in the next room and he had the ears of a bat, the bastard. If she got loud enough for him to hear her over the noise of the water, he'd be laughing at her for about a million years.

(Somewhere at the back of her mind was the knowledge that if Dean heard her, his response would not exactly be laughter. But she wasn't going to think about that.)

Draping the washcloth over the head of the shampoo bottle, she redirected the spray and leaned against the cheap plastic side of the shower stall, spreading her legs and letting her hand slide down over her wet belly, ever closer towards her ultimate goal. When her fingers finally slipped between her legs, tangling in the damp curls there, she let her head drop back against the wall with a quiet "thunk," suppressing the moan that wanted to claw out of her throat. God, that was good. One hard rub against her clit, and she thought the top of her head was going to fly off.

_Oh, yeah._ She grinned to herself and set to work in earnest. God, it felt like forever since she'd done this. She'd just have to make up for lost time, then, and make this one good.

Her mind wandered, trying to latch onto a good fantasy. Sometimes just this was enough, the simple physiological stimulation, but tonight she felt like her mind was revving at a hundred miles an hour, and she'd never get anywhere if she couldn't get herself to focus. She instinctively shied away from memories of Jess- totally counterproductive, she'd shut down completely if she went there- and instead ran through a mental list of crushes, people she'd been attracted to in the past. Lori the preacher's daughter popped up first, but Sam discarded the idea. Lori's guilt lay too close to her own, and the pious goodness she held tight around her like a cloak was too far removed from the take-no-prisoners type Sam had always been attracted to.

In quick succession, she thought about 'Becca, her first friend at Stanford besides Jess, and her hot older brother Zach, who always talked with his huge hands, adorned with a single silver ring, and how they'd always made her shiver. She thought about her sophomore English professor, and the way his cheap suit had fit just a little too tightly over broad shoulders. She even remember Haley from Blackwater Ridge, but thinking about her made Sam think about Dean, the way he'd flirted with her just to be a jackass, but Sam knew he'd never follow through because he'd been too busy watching her and making sure that she was okay, that she was holding up okay. Dean, who'd watched her wake up from what felt like a hundred nightmares and did nothing but hand her a cup of coffee and went back to his newspaper, Dean who'd dived into a haunted lake to save a little boy, Dean who was afraid to fly, Dean who never followed through with any of the waitresses or barflies he was always hitting on, Dean who looked at her and said "We could stay" even though he knew they couldn't, Dean, her best friend in the world, Dean with his amulet and his ring and broad shoulders and the way he'd do pushups shirtless on the floor every morning and sometimes Sam would pretend she was asleep just so she could watch him, skin gleaming, muscles rippling as he worked, up and down, up and-

_Fuck._

She came back to herself with the realization that she'd bitten her lip almost hard enough to draw blood. But at least she probably hadn't made any noise, not loud enough to be heard over the shower, anyway. She shakily withdrew her hand from between her legs and let the water wash away the evidence, then turned off the shower and got out, scrubbing herself painfully dry with the rough hotel towel as a sort of penance for her sins.

When she came out, Dean was sitting in the chair with his feet up on the table, crossed at the ankle, boots half-untied, like he'd gotten started and then forgotten. Probably in favor of the tabloid that was spread out over his lap, that he was reading as if nothing else in the world deserved his attention.

"Finished, Sammy?"

There was nothing in his voice to indicate that he'd heard anything. She let out a tiny sigh of relief and said, "It's Sam. And yeah, shower's yours."

"Awesome," he said, and totally abandoned the tabloid in favor of hot water, shedding clothes as he went. Sam, still riding the high of guilt and orgasm, very carefully didn't look.

When she went to sleep that night, she made sure that her back was facing Dean.

**-----**

"This town is really creepy."

"Well, yeah, Sammy, that's what I've been trying to tell you." Dean finished stripping down his pistol and carefully laid the pieces out on the towel-covered table in front of him. She was surprised that he hadn't just dived into the steam shower, but apparently he had still had some sense of priorities, even if his flexible sense of the law had gone even farther down the toilet then she'd remembered. Dad had taught Dean all the less-than-legal moneymaking skills that he currently employed, but Dad at least had picked up some work in whatever garage he could find in whatever town they were in that week, at least until a case had come up and he'd disappeared and lost the job. Dean had all of his father's skills, on the hunt or under a car, but none of his instinctive sense of right and wrong.

Well, that wasn't true. Dean had a very well-defined sense of right and wrong, actually. It was just light-years away from anyone else's, and always had been. When she was a kid, it had made her big brother seem even cooler, and as she'd gotten older, she'd had reason to be grateful for it. If Dean was at all normal, they'd never have crossed that line. As it was, it had taken two years from that first breathless, adrenaline-fueled kiss after a near-miss on a hunt to her first time, stretched out on the backseat of the Impala with Dean pressed warm and solid over her in the darkness.

Now, it just made her tired. Against the backdrop of small-town America, Dean's weirdness stood out like a dog at a dinner party, and the contrast between her own childhood and the white-picket fences was making her head ache. Dean had seen to it that she'd been cushioned from the worst of her father's disappointment and been allowed, within reason, to do her own thing, but she'd been through her fair share of scenes like the one Matt's dad had put him through back there. She understood him better than she liked, not that she said anything about it to Dean. It was old history, anyway.

"Everyone keeps thinking that we're married."

Dean arched his eyebrow from across the room. "I hate to explain this to you, Sam, but when a man and a woman show up looking to buy a house, it's not that big of a leap to think that they're husband and wife, get me?"

Sam scowled at her hands. Why was she here, anyway? For once, she had the run of a whole house instead of a claustrophobic motel room, and yet here she was, sitting on the bed in the room Dean had claimed as his own, watching him cleaning his guns. She didn't want to think about what particular issue this was indicative of. She had other problems.

"It's not the fifties anymore. People live together without getting married first." She'd only had about six months in that apartment with Jess. She knew that Jess would have said yes if she'd asked sooner, but she'd wanted to be sure. Now she regretted the wait.

"You'd rather those jerks thought we were fucking?"

Sam scowled harder and picked at the bedspread. "Lovers," she corrected. She didn't know why his blunt language bothered her, he'd cursed in front of her all her life, but it just… did.

Dean didn't look up from his gun. "Ex-lovers," he said quietly.

Sam hissed out a breath and got up from the bed. Fuck if she knew what she was doing here. This was pointless. "Siblings," she snapped back, and started out of the room.

Dean's low voice seemed to follow her out. "Never bothered you before."

She slammed the door on him and the idea, and stalked off to check the scanner.

**-----**

Missouri's house was full of ghosts.

Sam was actually kind of surprised to see them there. Despite what Dean seemed to think, not all ghosts should be exorcised, and the harmless ones, the ones that just floated around and didn't even have enough juice to play pranks on passers-by, tended to like populated areas, big cities and the like. Maybe they liked to be around a lot of people, or whatever, but Sam hadn't seen one since her first year at Stanford. There'd been quite a few of them then, but by the time summer break rolled around, they were all gone, moved on to greener pastures or just away from her. She'd always figured that they didn't like psychics. Here was evidence that she was wrong- not only was this a small town, in the middle of Kansas of all states, but there were five ghosts in the house of a psychic and none anywhere else in the town, so they had to be here for Missouri Mosely.

What that said about Sam, she didn't want to think about. If they liked psychics but didn't like her, then it meant that there was something unusual about her, and not in a good way. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that it had something to do with the Demon, but she didn't want to think about that either. She had enough on her mind already.

She'd never really met another psychic before. Then again, she didn't really consider herself a "true" psychic. She knew things, sometimes, and she could always find her family and see little ghosts, but it was only occasionally useful. She couldn't read minds, not the way Missouri could, and she couldn't ever seem to see the big ghosts, the ones they were hunting. She could find Dean, but she couldn't find the demon. She'd known Jessica was going to die before it happened, but she didn't know enough to stop it from happening. Ultimately, her so-called "gift" was nothing more than a parlor trick, just enough talent to get herself in trouble.

She deliberately didn't think about the way furniture moved when she was angry. Dean hadn't said anything about it either, even though she'd almost brained him with a chair that first night after Jess's death. He knew about a lot of the things she could do, but he'd never seen her move something before, and she'd never told him that her nightmares sometimes came true. He was unhappy enough that she'd had a vision taking them back to Lawrence, so she was grateful that he hadn't brought up the telekinesis thing. Yet, anyway. She knew as well as her own name that it was going to come up at some point. The way her life was going, she had to wonder why Fate just couldn't leave them the fuck alone.

Case in point. Missouri got Dean started on the () and then took Sam out to the porch, carefully shutting the door behind her to make sure that Dean wouldn't overhear what they were saying. Sam stood warily with her back against a pillar, hands stuffed in her pockets. This was the kind of conversation she liked to avoid, she just knew it.

"You saw 'em in there, didn't you?"

Sam shrugged uncomfortably, but didn't pretend not to know what she was talking about. "Yeah."

"Your daddy never told me you had the Gift." She said it like that, capital letters, as if it were something to be proud of. Then again, she probably was.

"He doesn't know," Sam said. She sighed and ran one hand through her hair. Shit. Tangled. She'd been in such a tearing hurry to get out to Kansas this morning that she'd completely forgotten to take a comb to it. "It didn't start until puberty, and by then I'd already figured out that secrets were the Winchester way." Okay, that came out a lot more bitter than she'd intended. "Dean only found out by accident, when I saved his ass from a rabid bear."

Missouri looked momentarily distracted. "A rabid _bear?_ Mercy, but I don't think I'd like to run into one of those."

"Neither did we. Dad thought it was a werewolf."

"But you knew better." Her eyes were sharp, knowing. Sam shrugged again.

"Yeah."

"And does Dean know what brought you here?"

Fuck if she wanted this woman in her head. "Yeah."

"Honey, if you don't want me readin' you, all you gotta do is shut me out."

Sam blinked. "I don't know how."

"You just gotta know what you want, is all," Missouri said. "The Gift comes from your emotions. That's why you see more girls than boys with this gig- your brother in there wouldn't know his own feelings if they walked right up and said hello. If you'd been born a boy, chances are you wouldn't 'a made it this far, but you weren't and you did and you gotta learn to control it or you're gonna be wide-open for every spirit out there that's got a problem with girls like you 'n me."

"So what you're saying is, I have to know how I feel, and what I want, and it all comes from there?"

"Well, it's a little more complicated than that, but yeah, sugar, that's about all there is to it. If you want me outta your head, I'm out. You've got enough juice to do it."

She wanted her out.

Missouri looked surprised for a second, then grinned. "Just like that. You're gonna want to learn a little control, but that comes with practice."

"What if I don't want to practice?" What if she didn't want this at all?

Missouri seemed to know what she was thinking, though Sam guessed that it was more intuition, since she was still holding her mind closed with everything she had. "It doesn't matter what you want, honey. The Good Lord gave you this for a reason. Maybe you should try and figure out what it is before you go dismissin' it outta hand."

Sam sighed. "I'll think about it, all right?"

"All I can ask," Missouri said amiably, and opened the door for her to go through.

Dean was still in the kitchen, muttering to himself over the (). Missouri walked past him, giving him a good whap on the head as she went. "I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head in my kitchen, Dean Winchester."

"I didn't say anything!" he protested, but he was looking at Sam, still frozen in the doorway. "You okay?" he asked her, his careful gaze running up and down like he was afraid Missouri had taken a bite out of her or something.

"I'm fine," she said, and she was. She had a lot to think about. But Dean was worried _for_ her, not _about_ her, and that made a hell of a lot of difference.

Her father was a different matter, but if he wanted to pretend that he wasn't in town, that was fine with her. She'd long ago learned not to expect anything of the man. It was different for Dean. It was Dean's heart John was breaking, not hers.

**-----**

Sam steered him to the bed, carefully not staggering despite the fact that he was leaning on her so hard she was carrying almost his full weight. And he wasn't exactly a lightweight- years of fighting and heavy training had added layer upon layer of muscle, and the adrenaline that had kept him going throughout the fight and its aftermath had receded, leaving him like a puppet with its strings cut, a dead weight dragging at her shoulder. She didn't complain, despite the fact that her own body felt like it was pummeled and he'd almost dislocated her jaw. She deserved worse.

"Just stay there for a second and let me get the med kit, okay?"

Dean swayed, looking like he was about to fall over backwards, and glanced at her through half-closed eyes. "I'm not going anywhere, Sammy."

"Right." She fled to the bathroom, opening up the med kit and taking out the stuff she needed- bandages, cleaning supplies, surgical tape. She probably should have brought Dean in here, it would have been easier, and less messy, to do it this way, but she hadn't been sure that she could get him even one step further into the room. She could take care of everything out there, anyway. If they messed up Dean's bed, he could just take hers. She could sleep in the chair- it wasn't like she was going to get a lot of rest tonight, anyway.

When she went back into the main room, supplies clutched in front of her like a shield, Dean was still sitting where she'd left him, staring glassily at the bathroom door like he'd been waiting for her. His denim jacket lay beside him on the floor, but his shirt was only pulled down as far as his elbows, like he'd gotten started and just lost the energy to finish.

She dropped the stuff onto the bed behind him and snagged the chair with one ankle. Pulling it over, she spun it around and straddled it backwards, nudging Dean's thighs apart so that she could sit close enough to get at his chest. "I'm gonna have to cut this off, you know."

"Go for it," he said, which just went to show how tired he was. They went through clothes so fast that Dean had long ago gotten to the point of hoarding even the most holey of shirts until Sam forced him to toss them in the rag bag.

She did manage to save the black button-up, but the gray t-shirt was toast, speckled with blood and ground-in salt and graveyard dust. "This is gonna hurt," she warned, as she readied the surgical scissors at the hem.

"No shit, Sherlock. Just do it, okay?"

_"C'mon. Do it!"_

She shoved away the memory and focused on cutting through the cotton as quickly and cleanly as possible. She had to peel it away from his chest where she'd- where he'd been shot, but other than a short hiss of pain that he couldn't quite contain, Dean didn't react. Grateful for small mercies, she got the t-shirt the rest of the way off him and tossed it in the direction of the trash can. Normally they'd save ex-shirts for gun rags or whatever, but she didn't want to see that particular piece of fabric ever again.

It was bad enough looking at the wounds on Dean's chest, the spackle of wounds, seeping blood till it was smeared over his skin. She swallowed hard (_"You hate me that much? You'd shoot your own brother?"_) and set to work with the hydrogen peroxide, wincing along with Dean every time the chemical got into the wounds. The salt was probably just as good as anything to keep infection out, but even the sting of the peroxide couldn't be as bad as the salt if she'd left it there in the open wounds.

"I told you that you shouldn't drive," she muttered as she smeared ointment and started applying the bandages. "But would you listen to me? Oh, no."

_"I have a mind of my own. I'm not pathetic, like you."_

"My car," Dean said. "My rules."

"Yeah, I got that, thanks." Despite the anger in her voice, her hands were gentle as she finished with the bandages and started picking up all the assorted odds and ends of first aid. She wasn't angry with him, anyway. "There, all done."

"Awesome," Dean said, and promptly fell backwards onto the bed. She took everything back into the bathroom and spent another five minutes making sure everything was put back into its proper place, fussing over the kit long after she was finished.

Finally, she ran out of even the illusion of things to do and went back into the room, wondering just what she was going to have to say to Dean. Luckily for her, he was passed out on the bed, having somehow inchwormed his way up the top and rolled himself up in the blanket like a burrito. He wasn't snoring, but Sam knew it was just a matter of time.

She set the room to rights, putting the chair back, carefully packing up their stuff in anticipation of a late start tomorrow. If Dean slept in like she thought he might, she knew that he was going to be pissed at the extra time it would take to put his stuff away.

When she finally ran out of stuff to do, she gave up and headed for bed, not even bothering to change out of her clothes. The boots ended up on the floor with twin "thunks," and she froze, waiting to see if she'd woken Dean up.

He didn't move, and she let out a sigh of relief. God, she was tired. It was a good thing Dean hadn't ended up taking her bed- she was exhausted enough that she might actually get some sleep tonight after all.

A hand on her arm stopped her before she could crawl into bed. She froze, then slowly turned to see Dean awake and watching her, his eyes gleaming just a little bit in the faint light coming through the window. His fingers circled her wrist, a question instead of a demand (_"I'm getting sick and tired of taking your orders"_), a bracelet that she could break if she wanted to.

She didn't.

She crawled into bed next to him when he scooted over to make room for her. It took some maneuvering for her to find a position that didn't poke either of their war wounds, but finally she lay curled up against his side, her head resting in the hollow where shoulder met chest, one arm wrapped loosely around her shoulders.

She breathed in the smell of Dean's skin and said, quietly, "I really didn't mean it, Dean."

_"Jesus, Dean, wake up and smell the coffee. I left, I fell in love. The end. It had nothing to do with you."_

"I think you did," he said after a moment. When she tensed up, ready to protest, he shushed her and said, "Maybe not all of you, but you weren't possessed. The ghost wasn't making you lie. There was a part of you that meant everything you said."

Miserable, she hid her face in Dean's shoulder and said nothing. After a moment, his hand on her shoulder drifted up to her hair and started to stroke.

"But I can get that. I've probably thought worse at some point or another. It happens when you spend so much time with your- brother." The pause was tiny but noticeable. "You just need to _know_ that's what it was, instead of passing it off as possession."

"Know your weakness, right?" Sam joked. Dean's fingers paused for a fraction of a second, then resumed their idle combing of her hair.

"That's what Dad always said, anyway."

_"And just what you do think Dad would say, if he knew that the little soldier still wanted to fuck his baby sister?"_

"Sorry," she said again. She knew that he was reliving the same moment she was.

"Don't," he said. "Look, it's over. In the morning we're out of here and never have to see the town again. It's all good."

It wasn't even close. "It's just I-" She stopped, then forced herself to continue. "I love you, okay? I don't want to hurt you." And that, at least, was true. The words had been hers, or at least a part of her. The actions hadn't been.

He caught in a breath, suddenly, and his hand tightened in her hair to the point of pain. "Sam?" he said, and in a split second she realized that he'd completely misunderstood what she was trying to say.

Or maybe, he hadn't.

"Yeah," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. "I'm here."

"I've been waiting," he said simply, and she knew he had. He'd never gone home with any of the girls he'd flirted with in bars and diners and cases, never come back to their motel room at four in the morning looking rumpled and smug, never taken his eyes off Sam long enough to notice that anyone else was there. He'd been giving her time, but the quiet expectation that she was just now noticing had been choking her all along and she'd never even realized that she was having trouble drawing breath.

His patience was the only thing that Dean had been able to give her, but it was more than enough. It was the kind of unconditional love that no one else had ever been able to give her, not her long-lost mother, not her distant father, not even Jess, who'd wanted to be her everything. And even then, she hadn't been able to take it, because Dean had already been her everything, and she just hadn't wanted to believe it.

"I know," she said, and reached out to trace a wondering fingertip over the curve of his mouth. He pursed his lips in a kiss against the pad of her finger, and when she didn't pull away, she felt them curl up in a smile.

She pulled her fingers away, framed his jaw in both hands, and kissed him.

She loved the way he kissed her back. No one else was like this, restrained violence, like a tropical storm in a bottle- breathtaking, beautiful, absolutely focused. Her hand slid downwards, spanning his neck, then the curve of his shoulder, and finally coming to rest on the curl of his bicep as his free hand came up to tuck itself in her hair. She felt trapped by the weight of his expectations, pierced by the force of his desire like a butterfly on a pin, loved more than she'd ever been in her life. She was exhilarated and terrified all at once.

Dean ripped his mouth away from hers long enough to ask, "Are you sure?" Moonlight highlighted the naked emotion on his face.

"Yes," she said, though she wasn't. She'd never been less sure of anything in her life. Then she added, "I need you," which was nothing less than the gospel truth.

"I've missed you," he said, and before she could think of anything to say, he kissed her again, and she didn't think about anything for a long, long time.

When the phone rang the next morning, she lay curled against Dean's side and listened to every word her father said, and felt not the slightest bit of guilt.


	3. Chapter 3

**Three.**

_I love you I hate you I love you I hate you  
I can't keep my hands off you  
I love you I hate you I love you I hate you_

_You can do no wrong_

--"Close Up," Frou Frou

They were thirty miles out of town when the pain hit.

"Ah, fuck," she groaned, her arm immediately curling in a protective circle around her stomach. "I do not need this right now." She'd been aware of a mild ache earlier, but then she'd had to run off to save her brother and she hadn't put it together with the date. She should have been paying attention; her periods had always been way worse than normal, and she'd long ago learned how to deal with them. She should have known better. Her own stupidity was almost more irritating than the worried look that Dean immediately sent her way.

"Sam?"

She waved him off and curled up a little tighter in her seat. "Don't worry, it's not a vision," she said.

The worried look didn't go away. "Then what is it?"

God, she hated it when he made her spell things out. "Just plain ol' garden-variety cramps," she told him.

"Ah," he said, the worried look abruptly exchanged for "awkward!"

"Yeah." She rolled her eyes. Sometimes, he was such a _guy._

But he didn't immediately pretend that the conversation hadn't happened, like most guys did. "You need me to pull over so you can get at the med kit?"

She hadn't realized that he'd even noticed the little bottle of Midol tucked away between the ibuprofen and rolled gauze. She wasn't sure why- Dean was OCD in the extreme when it came to keeping that thing stocked and organized, not that he didn't have reason- but it was probably because Dean had never said anything about it. And it was the kind of thing that Dean usually couldn't resist commenting on.

Then again, this was the sixth time she'd gotten her period since she'd gone on the road with him again (_god, six months gone_) and he hadn't said anything about it yet. It wasn't like he could've missed the box of tampons on the bathroom counter, either, on the days when she just couldn't be bothered to tuck everything neatly back into her duffel. Chances were, he was just getting weird about it now because they were having sex again.

"Nah, it's empty. Just stop in at the next gas station."

"All right," Dean said. "Next time, toss out the bottle when you're done with it, okay?"

She rolled her eyes. "Sure thing, _Dad._" Dean shot her a betrayed look out of the corner of his eye, and she immediately wished that she could take her words back, but he turned back towards the road with a clenched jaw and she knew that it was too late.

Damn it. They'd been doing so well, too. He'd even been laughing earlier, mostly when she started mocking him for getting himself kidnapped. There'd been none of barely-subdued anger that she'd in abundance during their fight. She wondered if she wouldn't always associate his expression of clenched-jaw fury with the sight of the Impala's taillights driving away.

"Sorry," she muttered, not that Dean bothered to acknowledge her apology. At least she was on the right side of the car door, this time. It could be worse.

_We're all that's left._

No, it couldn't. Sam was abruptly astounded by her own stupidity. Not in hitchhiking by herself, like Dean had yelled at her, because fuck it, she could take care of herself, even against horny truckers. No, her particular idiocy lay in the dangerous juxtaposition of Dean's insecurity and her own hard-headed-ness.

What was Dean's worst fear in the world? That everyone was going to leave him. The shifter had told her that, and she had no reason to disbelieve it. It fit with what she knew about her brother, anyway. Her leaving for Stanford had left scars, some of which she was just beginning to see. And yet, the _day fucking after_ she'd both made it excruciatingly clear how much she didn't want him and then crawled into his bed and proved how much she needed him, she turned around and picked a fight and yeah, there we go, _left him_.

(Technically speaking, he'd been the one driving off, but she was the one who got her duffel out of the trunk. It was a signal even Dean at his worst couldn't ignore, and he hadn't. He never had been able to let her leave first.)

Christ, what an idiot. You'd think she'd learn from her mistakes, but no, apparently not. Two nights before she'd fallen asleep in Dean's arms for the first time since she was seventeen years old, and she'd been thinking about how careful she'd have to be, not to screw this up again. And the very next day, anger got the better of common sense and she went and screwed it up, just like she'd thought she might.

But the thing was, this was Dean. Her brother, for all the good and ill that meant. He couldn't leave her if she didn't try to leave him first, which meant that no matter how badly she fucked up, as long as she didn't walk away (or as long as she always came back) she'd never be rid of him. The thought both thrilled her and terrified her. Even with Jess she'd never held someone's heart in her hands so completely. She'd had Dean's since he was four years old, but it had taken her this long to realize it.

"Dean," she said, and waited for him to look at her. He did, just a tiny glance out of the corner of his eye, but it was good enough for her. She unbuckled her seat belt and slid across the seat towards him. He couldn't mask his instinctive flinch, though his hands on the wheel never wavered.

She laid one hand on his thigh, down by his knee, and the other over his chest, and leaned in till she could lean her head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she whispered into his shirt, her apology filled with all the wealth of understanding that the previous one had lacked, and after a split second of tension, his muscles relaxed and she could feel his smile over the top of her head.

"Jesus, Sam, don't start up with the girl stuff again," he grumbled, but she just smiled. She knew how to speak Winchester. She'd learned from the experts.

"Hey, at least I know why you were such a bitch this week."

"I did not have PMS, Dean."

"Well it sure seemed like it."

"God, could you be any more of a pig?"

In the tiny intervening pause, she felt his grin, and answered herself before he could. "Of course you could. I don't want to know."

He laughed. "Hey, Sam, why do you think PMS is called PMS?"

"Dean, don't you dare."

"Because 'mad cow disease' was already taken."

"Dean!"

**-----**

Dean was lying on the bed brooding when Sam got back. She'd been lurking around the drink machines in the lobby, and she'd seen Layla hurry out, looking like she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Sam knew the feeling.

"Hey," she said softly. Dean didn't look at her.

"You believe in God, Sammy?"

Not hard to guess what brought this on. "Yeah, I guess."

"You pray?"

"Sometimes." She went over to sit next to him on the bed, nudging him to get him to scoot over. "When things get dark, sure. There are no atheists in foxholes, right?"

"I never have." He blinked, finally, then rolled over onto his side to look at her. "I mean, sure, the exorcisms, but that's simple cause and effect, you know? You say the right words, and the demon goes away. But talking to God, thinking that he's actually listening? No way."

_ "Yeah, well, seems like my sister has enough faith for the both of us."_

"And now you're… changing your mind?" Talking to Dean when he was like this was like feeling her way through a minefield deaf and blindfolded. "You gotta give me something here, dude. I don't know what you want to hear."

"Nothing, I guess. I dunno if I believe in God or whatever, I'm not changing my mind, I just…"

In her mind's eye she saw Layla walking away. "You want to pray for Layla."

"God, I hate it when you do that," Dean complained, but he didn't seem really unhappy about it. "I told her I would. For her." He laughed, sounding a little rusty. "She said that was a miracle, right there."

"See? She's a good judge of character. Not that you didn't make your opinions clear." She kicked off her boots and then scooted down the bed, till she was looking eye-to-eye with Dean. "There's not a set formula or anything, Dean. There's no right or wrong. You just say what's in your heart."

"Corny."

"And cliché for a reason, you dork." She leaned her forehead against his. "Forget praying. I'm just glad you're here."

"Yeah, I'm not exactly complaining about it myself."

"Could have fooled me." Her voice was mild.

_"You're not gonna let me die in peace, are you?"_

He sighed. "Look, it wasn't like that. I just didn't want it to be this big thing, you know? You on this crusade to get me better, and blaming yourself if you couldn't. It wouldn't have been your fault."

"No, but that doesn't meant that I wasn't going to do everything I damn well could to get you better," she said. "And if you think I'm sorry it worked, think again."

"Sam, someone died for me. Don't tell me that's okay." His eyes were closed. She wasn't sure whether that made it easier or harder to answer with the truth.

"No, it's not. But I don't care."

His eyes snapped open. "Sam."

"You're alive, Dean. If you think I care about anything else, you're delusional."

"Sam, you can't-"

"I can," she said. "You're here. That's all that matters."

"But-"

"All. That. Matters," she repeated. "Fuck everything else. You've saved enough lives. The world owed you this one." The world owed me this one, she told him silently. Didn't you think what it might be like for me, living without you?

"It's not a matter of _numbers-_"

"Maybe not," she said. "But it's good enough for me." She kissed him to shut him up, before he could say anything else, because she didn't want to hear him say anything else about how him being here was a bad thing.

He gave in pretty quickly, just like she'd known he would. He was such a sucker for kissing, and she wasn't above using it against him.

It was the work of moments to get his pants open, and slide down his chest. She didn't bother to undress him the rest of the way, or mess around with her own clothing- she knew what she wanted, and nothing he said or did was going to stop her.

He arched up and cried out when she closed her mouth around him, and inwardly, she smiled. She _owned_ this man. He was hers, bound by blood and bone and love and loyalty, in every way that mattered. If he thought that she was going to let a little thing like death separate them, he had another think coming.

It was appropriate, she thought, to end it like this. Dean had been given back to her by the worst kind of perversion of faith. It was only right that she celebrated that gift with a sin.

**-----**

She came out of the vision screaming.

"No!"

The doors of the closet blasted open. She blinked, startled by the sudden light and freedom, and then registered the cabinet- or what was left of it, anyway. It was in pieces against the far wall- some of them _in_ the wall.

Emotions. Right.

_Max was going to kill her brother._

How would a nice cocktail of fear and anger do?

She'd always been the faster runner, though Dean could usually catch her over a longer distance. She didn't have to worry about distance now, though, just speed- up the stairs and down the hall and up to the door just in time to hear Max say, soft and tear-soaked and fucking terrifying- "Okay."

When she came through the door, she was already reaching out with everything she had.

Dean was still alive, thank God, and so was Max's stepmom. She'd made it there on time. She could stop this. She could make everything right again.

She managed to get ahold of the gun, through it made the sweat pop out on her brow to do it. Max had had a long time to practice this, and he was stronger than her, way stronger. If power and control came from the emotions, it made sense, because Max was running on a direct line of fear and anger and retribution, a permanent tangle of fight-or-flight hardwired directly into his brain. Max had a direct tap into his emotions, and Sam couldn't compete with that, but she did have one thing that he didn't, and that was force of will.

Max wanted his stepmother dead, and Sam wanted her brother alive. Willpower is motivation, and in this particular battle of motivation, Sam was going to win.

"How did you-" he said.

"You've got to stop this," she said. God, even talking was hard, but Dean was still standing there, his life depending on her, so she had to manage it. She had to keep control of the gun. "This isn't the answer. It's not going to change anything. We can _help_ you, okay? We can fix this."

"You can't fix everything," Max said. He was having more trouble than she was, and it looked like exhaustion was finally setting in. Her words were actually getting through to him now.

Hope flaring bright and hot, she held on with renewed vigor and kept the fuck talking. "Maybe not, but we can make things better. We can get you answers, help, whatever you need. But this? This _isn't the solution._"

He stared at her for a long moment, and she _felt_ him give way. They were so tightly locked in psychic battle that she could hear the echo of his thoughts. "You're right," he said, so faintly she almost couldn't hear him, but she knew. He believed her. She'd finally gotten through to him. She sagged with relief, and her grip on the gun slipped.

Max's brains splattered all over the floor.

The gun dropped to the floor with a clatter. She stared at the blood and tissue soaking into the neatly vacuumed carpet, and felt nothing but relief.

At least, she thought as Dean rushed over to her side, it hadn't been her brother.

**-----**

Regret had well and truly sunk in an hour later, though, after they'd gotten back to the hotel and Dean was packing up their clothes. Max had been like her, and she'd failed him. Sure, she'd saved their lives, but at what cost? The right words might have gotten through to him, might have given him hope instead of despair, and she hadn't been able to find them. She'd been taught how to say the right thing practically from the _cradle,_ and in the time where she needed it the most, that gift had failed her. She'd been tapped into Max's thoughts, and she still hadn't been able to stop him.

"I moved the cabinet."

Dean looked up from the shirt he was rolling. "You been working out while I wasn't looking, Sammy?"

Yeah, Dean was really good at deliberately misunderstanding what he didn't want to hear. Usually, she didn't mind. This time, she couldn't afford to let him.

"No, I mean I _moved_ it. Like Max."

"Oh. Right."

"Dean, it was in _pieces_. I saw a vision of you getting shot, and the thing freaking exploded away from that door. There were shards stuck into the wall."

When he didn't respond, she huffed out a breath and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Come on, Dean. You knew I could do this."

"Yeah, I did. But smacking me with a chair and exploding three-hundred-pound wardrobes are kinda different, y'know?"

"Yeah, I know. But it's really just a matter of degree. The problem is the same no matter what I'm doing with it."

Dean went back to folding shirts. "It happened twice. Freak occurrence, Sammy. I don't see the problem there."

Yeah, that was Dean Winchester at his stubborn best. "It's not a freak occurrence and you know it. I had a hold on that gun, Dean. I stopped him. And because I wasn't good enough, because I didn't know how to control it, I slipped up. I lost it, and Max died."

"Max killed himself, Sam. That doesn't make it your fault."

"Maybe not, but don't you see that I have to learn how to control it? Things could have ended differently if I'd known what I was doing." She wouldn't still be seeing brain matter every time she closed her eyes. Worse, she couldn't tell whose she was seeing, Max's or her brother's. "The visions seem to be on their own timetable, but they're not the only power I have, and it's time to recognize that."

Dean sighed and zipped up the duffel. "Okay, I get it. You need to practice. No problem. Practicing I can help with." He cast around on the table for a second, and then came up grinning with a- spoon?

"Bend this."

"I just told you I can't control it," she said, not sure whether to laugh or hit him. "It's not like there's a secret on-off switch."

"Come on, we're practicing here," he said. "Bend it, Sam. Become one with the spoon." He waved it back and forth in what was probably supposed to be a hypnotizing manner. "There is no spoon."

"Hard to become one with nothing," Sam said. "Also? Fuck you, Dean."

His eyes glittered. "Anytime."

She paused. It wasn't like she was adverse to the idea, and her body wanted to do something with the adrenaline comedown that was crashing in. Sex would wipe away some of the stain of ugliness that was cast over her memories of the day.

But she still saw brain matter on the backs of her eyelids, and she wasn't sure that she could deal with that much contact right now. She wanted to stick close to Dean, to hear his heart beating and feel the heat coming off his body, but if he pressed her back onto the mattress right now, she'd probably scream.

"We've got to get out of town before the cops print that gun," she said, hating how weak it sounded.

But he just shrugged and shouldered the duffle, apparently unconcerned. He knew her better than she realized, sometimes. He knew when to press, and when to retreat and let her lick her wounds a little.

"Alright then. Let's hit the road."

She walked out ahead of him, but before he turned out the lights, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him slip the spoon into his pocket.

**-----**

Dean hissed as she daubed ointment on the burn on his shoulder. "Damn it, be careful!"

"I am being careful," she snapped back. "You should have let me take you to a hospital, like I told you."

"Can't afford it," he grunted. "Fuck if I'm gonna use a fake credit card with a suspicious cop two towns away. I'm not stupid, you know."

"No, you're just stubborn. So stop whining and _let me finish._" She slapped the bandage on and started rolling gauze around his shoulder, ignoring his yelp of pain.

"Jesus, you vindictive bitch."

"I'm done, you big baby." She used three neat strips of tape to secure the end. "We could have paid for it out of the ready cash, you know."

"Yeah, 'cause coming in with a huge-ass burn and wads of cash isn't suspicious _at all._ If I could haul my ass out from the middle of nowhere on my own two feet, I didn't need to go to a damn hospital." Dean twisted his head down to check her work, and she didn't bother to hide her smirk when the motion pulled at his wound, making him wince. "Besides, till this heals up I'm not exactly going to be ready for the pool tables."

"I could play a few games," she offered.

Dean's momentary silence spoke volumes. "You don't hustle pool."

She sighed. He would choose _now_ to get difficult. "Dean."

"You sit outside on the car and pretend to be a hooker."

Despite knowing better, she still let herself get distracted. "I'm pretty sure that hookers don't read newspapers, Dean."

"But how you do you know? Have you ever met one? I mean, I know you make friends everywhere, but-"

"No, I haven't, because unlike _some people_ I've never had to pay for sex."

Dean just gave her a speaking look, one eyebrow raised. She ignored him.

"And I just meant that hookers probably don't sit around and read newspapers while they're on the job and why am I discussing this with you? _Do you want me to hustle pool or not?_"

"Only if you want to," he said.

She ignored the urge to strangle him- barely. He was clearly in one of his moods, the way he always got when she had to save his ass instead of the other way around. (And her going missing probably hadn't helped.) It wasn't that he didn't trust her to have his back, or thought that girls were less capable or whatever bullshit. It was just that he hated the idea of his little sister bailing him out of trouble, pure and simple. It messed with his manly pride, and he always sulked about it for fucking ever afterwards.

She'd had to save him from an incubus once, when he was sixteen. She hadn't quite started puberty yet, or at least wasn't far enough along that the pheromones the incubus exuded affected her. Dean, on the other hand, was sixteen and so horny that a stiff breeze could set him off, and he'd been ripe pickings. She'd never been able to figure out which part embarrassed him more- that she had to come in and rescue him, or that she had to rescue him from an _incubus,_ not a succubus. He'd been taciturn for days afterward, and she'd been old enough to understand why, but she'd never said anything to him about it- or to Dad. Dean liked guys, who cared? He definitely liked girls, too, and with teenage-hood just a tantalizing few months away, she was slowly starting to realize how much she cared about who her big brother was attracted to.

Because she understood why he was being such an ass, she didn't smack him on the back of the head like she wanted to. Instead, she took a deep breath, and said, "Yes, I want to. I'll probably even be better at it than you, anyway."

He glared at her; apparently she'd offended his masculine pride again. "What makes you think that, hotshot?"

"I've got boobs, Dean. It's like an automatic advantage. For this sort of thing, guys are totally the weaker sex."

"Is that right."

She just grinned, ignoring the flat tone. "Yep."

"Get over here and I'll prove to you who's the weaker sex."

She grinned over her shoulder. "I dunno, Dean. You _are_ wounded."

"Then I guess you should kiss it better, huh?"

"God, you're such a dork." But she allowed herself to be snagged and pulled down onto the bed beside him.

"Watch who's talking, there, geek-girl," Dean said, and with that bit of charm, he kissed her.

She kissed him back, but only because he was wounded.

**-----**

"This is kinda weird."

Dean looked up from the gun he was checking. "Weird how?"

"I mean, after all these years, we might finally get a chance at the demon. _The_ demon, Dean. The one we've been chasing all our lives. Aren't you just a little nervous?"

"Not really," he said. He loaded the pistol, secured the safety, and tossed it onto the bed with all the other weapons. "Fight's a fight. Just a little bigger than usual, is all."

Which just about made sense, she thought. Dean got jittery about waiting, about being stuck with no options, and about emotional moments. But when there was something he could do, something his more-active-than-he-liked-to-pretend brain could chew on, a solution he could work towards, he was fine. If that solution happened to involve shooting, stabbing, or beating the crap out of something that deserved it, so much the better.

Sam, on the other hand, was just about to jump out of her skin. "Well, _I'm_ nervous," she said defiantly. "Jesus, Dean, this could be it. The big day." She sighed and sat down on the bed. "I can't even imagine what I'd do after. Sleep for a week, maybe."

"Yeah, I know the feeling." She saw him sneak a little glance out of the corner of his eye. "Then what?"

"I don't know." And she didn't. The possibilities were endless. School, maybe? A real job that didn't involve credit card fraud and hustling pool? "What about you?"

"This," he said, sweeping a hand at the pile of the weapons on the bed. His smile wasn't particularly happy. "I don't care if we kill that demon tonight, it's never going to be over. There's going to be others. There's always going to be something to hunt."

"Maybe," she said. "But there's gotta be something that you want for yourself."

"Yeah, for you not to leave the second this thing's over, Sam."

She watched him as he started to pack up the weapons. "I'm not going to just leave like that again, Dean," she said, even though she'd been considering it not thirty seconds ago. It had been a pipe dream, anyway. "This is too much a part of who I am, now. I can't be anything else any more than you can."

Dean was silent for a minute. "I never told you why I came to get you at Stanford."

She blinked. "'cause Dad was in trouble."

"Yeah, but I could've handled it myself," he said. "It wasn't the first time something had happened to Dad since you left. I was just… missing you, you know? I wanted you back. I wanted us to be a family again."

"You can have that," she said softly. "Dean, I'd do anything for you. You know that." Including stay, if that was what he wanted. And there was never any doubt in her mind that that was what he wanted.

"Yeah, I guess," he said. "But I know you want your normal life."

Privately, she doubted she was capable of living a normal life anymore. She'd been able to fake it before, with the normal girlfriend and the normal classes and the minimum of psychic powers breaking out, but it was different now. And Dean- she didn't think she could leave him again. It had nearly broken her the first time, and she didn't have it in her to try again.

"Maybe," she said. "But Dean? Even if I do go back to school- I won't, but I'm saying that if I do- I'm still your sister. And I still love you. There are some things that won't change." _We_ won't change, she silently begged him to understand. God, Dean, do you really think that I could give you up again?

He stopped fiddling the hilt of his knife and looked up at her- direct, painful, and so fucking scary. "If you wanted to," he said, "I could let you go."

If that wasn't a declaration as clear as anything, then she'd eat her fucking boots.

"If I wanted to," she said, "I'd hope you'd stop me."

He looked away, picked up the shotgun, but she knew he'd understood her. Getting him to believe it was another matter, and would probably take a lot more time, but she figured she was up to the task.

**-----**

She sat, fighting to keep still, as Dean stitched up the deep grooves on her face. "Think Dad noticed?"

"Stop talking, you're gonna make me fuck this up," Dean said. Despite the harshness of his tone, his fingers were gentle as he tied off the last stitch. "You look like Frankenstein's monster."

"Thanks, you look like a million bucks too," she said. "Seriously, Dean. Do you think he noticed?"

"Noticed what?" he asked. He smoothed ointment over his careful stitches, his fingertips butterfly-light over the sore, swollen skin.

"Me getting that flare out of the bag," she said. "I don't think he's going to buy that I just happened to have it in my pocket."

"Not in those jeans, anyway."

"_Dean._"

"Alright, alright." He held up his hands in surrender and sat down on the bed. His cuts had been shallower than hers, and he'd patched himself up in the bathroom mirror while she'd flinchingly cleaned out her own with excessive amounts of disinfectant. God only knew what kinds of germs and disease those daevas carried on their claws. The bloodstained bandages stood out starkly on his too-pale cheek. "No, I honestly don't think that he noticed. It was a reasonable thing to be carrying, if we were gonna be facing off against shadow beings. I don't think it's going to cross his mind that you might not have been carrying it when we walked in there."

"Occam's Razor."

"Whatever that is," Dean said, though she knew for a fact that he knew what she was talking about.

She ignored him and flopped sideways, curling up on the end of the bed with her head in Dean's lap. "This was not a good day."

Hesitantly, his hand came up and started coming through her hair. She arched her neck a little, encouraging the touch.

"Yeah, I know," he said. His fingers were working more surely now, picking up old rhythms, carefully separating strands of hair from the knots she knew were there. Dean always had been the only one who could detangle her hair without hurting her. Dad, of course, had been hopeless, and she'd worn it clipped short for so long that she hadn't quite known how to deal with it once she'd started growing it out in a fit of defiance. What she'd been defying against, she still didn't know. Their lifestyle, maybe, which was stupid because she'd been the one to keep it cut short in the first place, and Dad had never said anything about it one way or another. It was Dean who'd thought that she was asking for trouble, wearing long hair on a hunt, but he'd still detangled and braided it for her, every day.

"My bag was all the way across the room, you know."

His hands didn't pause. "I know."

"I'm getting stronger, aren't I?"

"I don't know about that," he said. "I saw what you did to that cabinet. I'd say you were pretty strong to start with. You're definitely controlling it better, though."

"All that practice is paying off." He'd hauled out that fucking spoon at every opportunity, taunting her with it, till she started snatching it away just to get a little peace. Dean was nothing if not creative in getting her to work on her skills, whether it was counting cards or telekinesis. She still remembered Dean kicking around a soccer ball with her, out in the parking lot behind her school, as part of a trade to get her to practice the crossbow. Dean had been the second, better half of her Dad's parenting skills- Dad ordered, and Dean bargained. Inevitably, she'd ended up fighting with Dad and doing what Dean wanted. She thought that was probably significant, but she didn't really care how.

"Told you so." He was radiating smugness, in a way that made her want to smack him. Not that that had ever done any good.

"Yeah, you're a genius all right."

"I've been saying it for years, Sammy. I'm so touched to know you listened."

"Whatever, dude, you're delusional." She sighed and nestled her good cheek against his jeans-clad thigh. "At least we got to see Dad again."

"Looked like you two made up, at least," he said. "I'm glad." His voice held nothing but simple pleasure- no hidden meanings, no too-neutral tone. Dean meant what he was saying.

"Yeah," she said. "I just wish he hadn't had to leave."

She felt his chest rise and fall in a sigh. "Me, too," he said. "But you know I was right. He never would have gotten caught like that if he hadn't been paying so much attention to us. The battle's heating up, Sam. We can't afford a mistake like that again. Next time, one of us might end up dead."

She'd rather it be Dad than Dean, a secret that she planned on taking to her _grave._ Dean would never be able to hear that, especially from her. "I know," she said. "But you're right. We're a family. We should be together."

"We will," he said, and in his voice she heard the echoes of a thousand promises Dean had made and damn near killed himself to keep. _I'll keep you safe. When I'm around, nothing bad will happen to you._ "One way or another, we're gonna come through this okay. I promise."

It wasn't a promise that he would necessarily be able to keep. But she believed him anyway, just as she had her entire life, every time she knew that something was wrong and he'd told her otherwise. "Okay," she said.

"Okay?" he asked. She turned her head and smiled up at him.

"Okay."

**-----**

"I'm pretty sure that was not a hundred miles," Sam said conversationally.

"I lied," Dean said. He was poking around in his duffel, looking for God-only-knew what. Sam took the opportunity to test the handcuffs holding her wrists to the headboard. There was always a chance that Dean hadn't latched them right.

"We're going to have a talk about that, you know." Later, when she wasn't tied to the freaking bed. Dean would not enjoy that talk.

If she'd known that Dean would have used that spoon to start a freaking prank war, she would have taken it away from him weeks ago. Bastard.

"All's fair in love and war, Sammy."

"And this is… which, exactly? From here, it's a little hard to tell."

"What, it can't be both?"

For a minute there, she thought her heart might stop. Was that… an admission? Of sorts? It sure sounded like it. Twice in one month? It almost seemed like she was making progress. For Dean, was a huge step, but still, she hadn't heard those words- or anything like them- come out of his mouth since she'd left for Stanford.

"Guess so," she managed, though her suddenly-dry mouth. "What are you looking for, anyway?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out the hard way," he said. "Shut up for half a minute, would you?"

"Oh, sure, take your time. It's not like I'm _tied to the headboard_, or anything."

He grinned up at her, his eyes gleaming. "Trust me, I noticed."

"Yeah, yeah. Are you gonna do anything about it, or are you going to leave me here to starve to death?"

"Relax," he said. "You might even enjoy this."

She snorted. "How many times have I been tied up in my life, Dean? I've never once enjoyed it."

"Yeah, but I like to think that I'm a little bit more fun than your average ghost or demon." He let a triumphant little hah! as he finally found what he was looking for and straightened with a vibrator in his hand, looking entirely too pleased with himself. She sighed and let her head drop back against the mattress.

"I'm not even going to ask how you managed to hide that," she said.

"Because I'm just that awesome, Sammy, pure and simple." She felt the bed dip and there was Dean, looming over her bare-chested, a smug grin plastered on his face. "You're going to like this, I promise."

"You bet I will," she said, and twisted free. He was surprised enough that she managed to flip and handcuff him in one easy motion, then sat back to survey her prize. "You fucked up the handcuffs, dude."

Damn, she was good. Dean had always been the better wrestler- more mass, more muscle tone, and a better reach- but she'd long ago learned how to fight dirty. He'd pinned her in seconds when he'd snuck up on her that night at Stanford, and this was the first time she'd gotten the drop on him since.

"Last laugh's on you, sucker," she said, and picked up the vibrator that he'd dropped. She twisted it on and relished the mildly panicked look that crossed his face. "Hope you've got some lube in that magic duffel of yours," she said. "And yeah, I have to tell you. I think I'm going to enjoy this a lot."

So did he, if the noises he made were anything to go by. Afterward, she fell over onto the bed next to him and lay there for what felt like forever, feeling the sweat cool and her breath slowly come back into her body.

"I've got a confession to make," Dean said.

"What's that?"

He held up the handcuffs, which he'd somehow picked in the last couple of minutes. "I fucked up the handcuffs on purpose."

She groaned and dropped her head back onto the pillow.

Come to think of it, Dean always had gotten the last laugh.

**-----**

There were very few things in life that really bothered Sam anymore. Her nightmares, for one, but she figured that was fair because sometimes her nightmares actually came true. Seeing her family get hurt was another. Seeing Dean in tears- about anything- was right up there at the top of the list.

"Dad just grabbed us and booked—dropped us off at Pastor Jim's about three hours away. By the time we got back to Fort Douglas, the shtriga disappeared. It was just gone. It never resurfaced until now. Dad never spoke about it again. I didn't ask. But he, uh—he looked at me different, you know—which was worse. Not that I blame him. He gave me an order, and I didn't listen. I almost got you killed."

"Bullshit, Dean. You were just a kid." She remembered the night he as talking about, or one that was a lot like it, anyway. Dad had left them alone a lot. But she sure as hell didn't remember some kind of monster trying to suck out her life, and she didn't remember Dad ever being anything but proud of Dean, ever. He'd been the golden boy, the good son, the obedient one. Well, at least now she knew why he was always followed orders. She'd have a pathology about it after something like that, too.

Or, well, maybe not. She always had been a little too stubborn for her own good, especially with Dad. More than once, it would have been easier to just pay lip service to what he told her to do and then do what she wanted anyway- it wasn't like he was ever there to know if she listened or not- but she'd always had to butt heads with him anyway. Apparently she had just as much a compulsion to argue with their father as Dean did to listen to him.

"Don't," Dean said. "Just- don't, okay? Dad knew this was unfinished business for me. And he sent me here to finish it."

"He sent _us_ here to finish it," she said deliberately. "We're a team, remember?"

That was almost enough to get a smile out of him, and for a moment he looked like the kid she remembered growing up. He'd only been four years older than her, but he'd halfway raised her, picking up all the slack that Dad left in his wake.

The other half, she'd mostly raised herself, which was probably the psychological base for the attachment she and Dean had. In some ways, they were the most nuclear family she'd ever met, and in some ways, the most fractured. Somewhere along the line, a few wires got crossed, and the love for the brother her world revolved around went off the tracks to somewhere completely different. Once upon a time, that had bothered her enough that she'd left, putting the final nail in the coffin of their already broken family unit, but that was four years and ten nightmares and thirty cases and one dead girlfriend ago. She'd mostly gotten over it by now, enough so that remembering Dean like he'd been when she was little, teaching her how to play poker and reading her Dr. Seuss, made her smile in memory instead of freak the hell out.

He'd always called her Sam-I-Am, she remembered. _Green Eggs and Ham_ had been her favorite Seuss book, and she'd made him read it so many times that she knew it by heart, even all these years later. She also remembered that he stopped calling her that when she was ten, old enough to be past "all that kid stuff," and started calling her Sammy instead. She'd loved both nicknames, but she liked the sound of "Sam" in Dean's mouth the best of all.

"I remember," Dean said. She bumped him with her shoulder, just a little bit, just enough to say that she was there.

"Alright," she said, and didn't say all the things that she was thinking. He wasn't ready to hear any of it, anyway. "Let's go kill this son of a bitch."

**-----**

_Local recluse Daniel Elkins was found in his home yesterday evening. His wounds were described as being "slashing cuts," like those made by a wild animal. The police would like to assure the citizens of Manning that they are doing everything they can to track down the animal in question-_

A broad, calloused hand descended into her line of sight, blocking out everything. "Guess who?"

She sighed. "Dean, you jackass, you better have beer."

The hand lifted away again, and Dean came around from behind her chair, holding the necks of two beer bottles in the fingers of his other hand. "Sam, a little faith, please? Of course I brought beer." He plunked the bottles down, popped one, and handed it to her. "And dinner's on the way."

"Excellent," she said. "Pass over the aspirin, would you? All this surfing's giving me a killer headache."

"Sure." She went back to the article while Dean dug around in his jacket pockets, trying to find the handful of pills he'd tossed in there earlier. _An anonymous source in the coroner's office, however, denied the possibility of an animal attack. "No animal I know has teeth like that," he said. When asked, the police admitted that there were signs that the house had been trashed by a burglar or vandal-_

"Gotcha," Dean said in triumph, plunking down the little white tablets on the table between them. She scooped them up and swallowed all of them with one long gulp of beer, and felt better immediately. Placebo effect, because it couldn't possibly hit her system that fast, but it was still nice.

Dean picked up his newspaper and she went back to her laptop and they both worked in amiable silence for a while until the food arrived. She watched with amusement as Dean dug into a stack of waffles that would terrify a lesser being, and took a bite out of her burger. Call her traditional, but she liked breakfast for breakfast and dinner for dinner. Dean was just a weirdo.

"Hey Dean, pass me the salt, would you? My fries are boring."

Dean made no move to comply, just stabbed another bite of waffle while carefully turning the page. "Get it yourself."

"Jerk," she grumbled, but she reached out to snag the salt shaker.

Dean's hand halted her progress, pinning hers flat against the table. All without looking up from his reading, the bastard. "What the hell?"

Dean smirked at her over the rim of the paper. "Not what I meant, Princess."

"What part of 'I have a headache' did you not understand?"

"You women, you're all alike. Can't even come up with an original excuse." His expression went serious. "C'mon, you need the practice. It's my job to make sure you get it."

"God, I hate it when you're right." She let her hand relax under his and focused, concentrating on the cheap white plastic of the salt shaker, trying to get it to move towards her. It wasn't that heavy; it shouldn't be this _hard_ to-

The shaker slid across the table, bumping up against the edge of her plate and falling still. Dean have her a triumphant grin.

"Way to go, Sam," he said, and finally released her hand. She wondered how he'd react if she told him to leave it where it was. Probably not well. Holding hands was yet another thing that Dean Winchester Just Didn't Do.

"Yeah, well. It was mostly empty," she said.

"Still. Not that long ago it would have taken you five minutes to get that thing where you wanted it, and you just managed in five seconds. I think that's worth a bit of celebration, you know?"

He was right. It was a big improvement, and she'd always thought false modesty was stupid, so. "Yeah, alright." Her grin was probably just about as big as hers. "How about you buy me another beer, then?"

"Works for me," Dean said. "After dinner. You found anything over there? You've been scowling something fierce at that screen."

Part of that was the headache, which was slowly vanishing under the slight haze of beer and food and accomplishment. "Yeah. Manning, Colorado. A local man by the name of Daniel Elkins was found mauled in his home."

"Elkins? I know that name."

A slight shiver of apprehension rolled down her spine. "Doesn't ring a bell for me." Dean fished out Dad's journal, and the shiver got stronger. She ignored it. "It sounds like the police don't know what to think. At first, they said it was some sort of bear attack, and now, they found signs of robbery."

"Mm-hmm." Dean stopped on one of the pages, his finger going unerringly to the right line. "Here, check it out." He handed it over to her, still pointing to the number listed next to the name "D. Elkins."

"You think it's the same Elkins?" she asked.

"It's a Colorado area code."

Answer enough. Sam handed the journal back and closed the laptop, turning her attention back to her burger. With her mouth full, Dean wouldn't expect her to talk, and she didn't know what to say. It was definitely something that they had to check out, no argument form her. It was just-

She had a bad feeling about this one.


	4. Chapter 4

**Four.**

_There's a car in the field now in a column of flame  
With two doors to choose but only one bears your name  
You've been drinking my blood well I've been licking your wounds  
I'll shave off the pitch now in the scope of your tune._

"Space Lord," Monster Magnet

She knew that he was there.

The doctors kept telling her that he was in a deep coma, that he couldn't hear her, that he wasn't _aware._ That was bullshit. He was there, with her, not trapped in the injured shell of his body. Somehow he'd gotten ripped loose and he was wandering around the hospital with her, his breath on the back of her neck, his voice whispering in her ear. She knew it. She _knew_ it. Every time she reached out, the little Dean-spot in her brain lit up like a Christmas tree. He was standing right next to her, just like he always was, only this time she only had herself to get them both out of this mess.

All she had to do was what she did best: find the solution. That was her job. She was the answers girl. She was the brains, the sudden leap of unlikely genius, and Dean was the brawn, the anchor that kept her ideas from getting a little too wild. Good thing that she mostly needed brains for this, or she'd be shit out of luck. Good thing that he was still here to yell at her if she went too far, 'cause she was so frantic to get him back that her brain was whirring in little circles, trying and trying and trying to find an answer, and she was afraid that the one she latched on to wouldn't be anything close to right.

"I know you're there," she told his empty room. "I'm gonna get this fixed. All you have to do is hold on till I can figure out how."

Something ruffled her hair. She glared at the empty space in front of her- it was just like him, to stand there and give her a spectral noogie like a giant _dork_ just because he knew that she couldn't get him back.

"Do not go gentle in that good night, you hear me? If you do, I will go after you and drag your sorry ass back, and trust me, you will not enjoy the experience. Are we clear?"

_Crystal,_ he almost-said. And she couldn't be sure, but she thought that the musical not-sound that swept through the room was probably the sound of Dean laughing.

* * *

She'd pretty much taken up permanent residence in the chair next to Dean's bed for the last two days. She'd been sitting so much that her ass was going to go flat, and she had about three different paper cuts from paging through the journal so many times, but she didn't know what else to do. She wasn't finding any answers. She was starting to think that there weren't any answers to be found.

No. She refused to believe that. The way to save Dean was here somewhere. She just had to look in the right place.

Her Dad stuck his head into the room, an unusually hesitant look on his face. "Any news?"

She shook her head. "He coded out a few hours ago, but they managed to shock him back. Nothing's happened since." She set the journal down on the edge of Dean's bed. "What's the word from Bobby?"

Her Dad came a little ways into the room, holding a big paper grocery bag full of something. "He says the Impala's dead in the water. Might as well sell it for scrap."

Sam clenched her fingers around the long sleeves of Dean's jacket and fought the urge to punch her father in the face. "No way. No way, Dad. Dean would kill us. He's gonna want to fix it when he's better."

Her Dad sighed. "I'm not sure there's anything _to_ fix, Sam. It's almost past salvage."

"If there's even _one_ working part, that's good enough for me and it'll damn well be good enough for Dean," Sam said hotly. "I'm not just gonna give up on-" She stopped. "You know what I mean."

Her Dad looked really sad for a minute, almost worse that she'd ever seen him. "I know, Sam. I told Bobby to go ahead and tow it. We can make our decisions later."

She deflated, all of her anger spent. She just didn't have that much left, anyway. All her energy was focused on trying to figure out how to save Dean. "Okay. Thanks."

He cleared his throat. "Sam, there a reason you're wearing your brother's coat?"

She looked down at her lap for a minute. The urge to give him an honest answer was almost overwhelming. For a split second, she wanted him to hurt almost as much as his crusade had hurt Dean. She wanted to make him bleed on the inside.

But the urge passed, and she was able to look up and meet his eyes. "It's cold in the hospital."

He held her gaze for a long, long time, like he was trying to dig around in her brain. She'd let him, if he wanted, though she didn't think that kind of thing ran in the family. She just didn't care if he knew, not anymore.

"What's in the bag?"

John shifted the bag to his other arm. "Oh, just a few things for protection. In case the demon comes looking for us."

"What sort of things? I didn't see any spells like that in the journal."

"Bobby looked it up for me," her Dad said. "Nothing too heavy. Acacia, Oil of Abramelin, crossroad dirt- just a few of the basics."

He looked her right in the eye and she knew he was lying. It was practically written across his forehead, what he meant to do. She closed her eyes.

The Colt wasn't going to be enough. The demon was going to want something more. The demon was going to make John sweeten the deal.

Dean was going to die.

"You let me know if you need any help with that spell," she said steadily.

His fingers tightened on the bag. "Yeah, I will." He started to turn around, then stopped while he was still in the doorway, his back to her. "Sammy?"

He hadn't called her that since she was fourteen years old. Same time she stopped calling him- "Daddy?"

"Take care of your brother." He paused, looked at her extra-hard. "Any way you know how."

How long had he known, she wondered? Since two minutes ago? Since she put on Dean's coat? Since they got to the hospital, or met up again on the road? Or had he known all the way back when she was just a kid and he'd never said anything? Was it because he loved her, loved Dean, or because he just didn't care?

She wasn't going to ask. She probably wouldn't ever know. "I will. I promise."

"That's a good girl," he said distantly, and walked away. He didn't shut the door; she could hear his footsteps, heavy and ponderous, fading away down the hall. Eventually they disappeared under the beep of Dean's heart monitor.

Tears burning in her eyes, she leaned down and pressed her ear to Dean's chest and just listened to the reassuringly steady beat of his heart. He wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't going to leave her, not now.

Her Daddy was gonna save the day.

* * *

She stared dry-eyed at the pyre as the flames licked higher and higher, like they were going to reach right up into the sky and burn out every single one of the stars. It seemed like a fitting end.

"Did he say anything to you?" she asked. "Before he…" She couldn't finish the sentence. Her throat closed up at even the thought of trying.

Dean didn't look away from the pyre. "He told me that he loved me. That he was sorry because he wasn't there for us." His jaw worked. "He said he was proud of me."

Sam could no more have stayed where she was than she could have halted the movement of the tides. She went straight to him, burrowing into his chest when he automatically opened his arms to let her in. "You moron. Of course he was."

She felt Dean swallow hard. "Yeah, well."

She shouldn't ask, she knew she shouldn't, but- "He say anything else?" She had to know.

Dean was silent for a minute. "He told me to look after you."

It was her turn to swallow nervously. "Yeah. About that. Dean, I think he… knew. I mean. About us."

"You told him?" Dean's voice was very aggressively neutral.

She looked up, biting her lip. Dean didn't exactly _look_ mad… "No! Uh, not exactly. And he didn't say anything either, but I definitely got the sense that he'd figured it out. Maybe a while ago, I don't know."

"Huh."

His expression didn't change any, and the suspense was going to fucking _kill_ her if she didn't get a reaction out of him soon. "Dean? Are you okay?"

"Well, Dad's dead," Dean said conversationally. "I almost died. We don't have the Colt. The demon got away. And Dad knew that we're sleeping together, possible for years. Am I okay?" He took a deep breath. "Can I get back to you on that?"

She muffled her giggle against his neck. "I think that's pretty reasonable, considering."

"Yeah." One hand was stroking slowly up and down her back, almost absently. She arched her back a little, trying to feel it better through the thick leather, and his strokes firmed.

"You ever going to give me back my coat?"

Dean had been wearing denim for the last few days, looking off-balance without the dark brown leather covering his frame. It was silly for her to keep it- it was huge on her, she was practically drowning in it, it made her look like a five-year-old playing dress up. She should just give it up and go back to wearing her own stuff. She had her own coats, nice ones, ones Dean had bought for her, even, that were way more practical.

"No," she said. "I'm keeping it. Get a new one."

He chuckled, the vibrations transferring over into her own frame. She loved the way it buzzed through his throat and rumbled down into his chest. "Maybe we can work out a time-share," he said. "What with it actually being mine, and all."

"Not anymore," she said. "I've laid claim. It's mine now."

They both knew she wasn't talking about the coat. "Whatever you say," he said fondly, and kissed the top of her head. "Let's get back to Bobby's before he comes looking for us."

"Yeah, okay." She reluctantly detangled herself from his arms and stepped away, looking one last time at the flames before she turned away. "You're sure he didn't say anything else?"

Dean looked somewhere over her shoulder, not meeting her eyes. "I'm sure. That was it."

He wasn't even trying to be subtle about the fact that he was lying. She could read him like a book, even without her little extras. There was definitely something else that he wasn't telling her.

She didn't press the matter. She was keeping a few things from him, too, after all.

"Okay," she said, and fished the keys to Dad's truck out of his pocket. "Let's get out of here."

* * *

Sam came back to the bar with the twenty in her hand, riding high on a wave of smug victory and the warmth in Dean's eyes. She'd seen Ellen whispering something to Dean, caught the angry, disapproving looks in the woman's eyes. She didn't like Sam. She didn't like Sam hunting, didn't like her playing pool, didn't like having her in her bar.

Sam really _felt_ that smile she sent towards Ellen's carefully blank face. Fuck you too, lady, she thought. I don't care what you think of me.

Dean was smiling fondly when she slid onto the barstool next to him. "Smoked him, didn't you?"

She laughed. "Not like it was much of a challenge. I've had better competition in a freaking college bar."

Dean snorted. "Yeah, from girls who weren't so busy trying to get a look-see down your shirt they couldn't hit the ball."

"Told you I had the natural advantage," Sam tossed back. Then it occurred to her that they were flirting, and she should probably tone it down a little before their audience caught on. She'd gotten used to spending all of her time alone with him or the strangers they met on a case, people who'd have no reason to know they were siblings. They'd been playing it safe at Bobby's, but that just meant they'd cut loose a little once they hit the road in the soccer-mom van. Careless not to cut it out earlier. "Did Dean tell you why we came?"

"He said that you're trying to track the demon off your dad's work, yeah," Ellen replied. "I'm not real sure I can help you there. There's not many who could track like your daddy."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Sam said. She'd been going through that folder for the last week, and she was just about cross-eyed from trying to make sense of it. "Anything you've got, though, would be a huge help. We need all we can get, at this point."

"Well, like I said, I can't make heads or tails of it, but I know someone who can."

Jo nodded. "Yeah. He's a certified genius."

Dean leaned a little further over the bar, casually flirtatious. Sam automatically checked his smile- it was just above friendly, enough to tell her that he thought Jo was cute but was flirting pretty much on autopilot. He probably wouldn't have done it at all if Jo hadn't been eyeing him up like a piece of steak. "Oh yeah? Where can we find him?"

The younger Harvelle smirked, matching Dean's pose. Sam snickered internally. Oh, honey. Don't even bother. "Not far," Jo grinned. She let out a shrill whistle. "Ash! Get your butt over here!"

One of the guys who'd been hanging around the pool table detached himself from the crowd and wandered over, a can of PBR in his hand. "You rang?"

Dean's eyebrows were going to disappear into his hairline if he raised them any higher. "You gotta be kidding me. This guy's no genius, he's a Lynyrd Skynyrd roadie."

The kid with the mullet laughed. "I like you, man. Gimme the stuff."

"Give him a chance," Jo said.

Sam had her doubts too, but she passed over the folder. "Dad had kind of a weird way of tracking, and I'll be damned if I can make sense of it."

Ash paused with one hand on the folder, giving her a nice, slow up-and-down look. "Well, no offense, sweetheart, but it probably isn't your area of spec-i-al-ity."

Sam gritted her teeth. "Well, you know, it's not like I wasn't raised hunting, and had a 3.9 GPA in Stanford, or anything. I'm pretty sure I can sound out all the big words."

A slow smile spread across the kid's face. "Well, aren't you something. I dig the smart chick thing."

Dean laughed out loud. "Oh, man. Keep it up and you're going to be saying goodbye to your balls."

Sam smiled. "He's not wrong."

Ash held up his hands. "Okay, okay, chill out. It's not like I meant anything by it." Practically dripping wounded dignity, he opened up the folder and started paging through. "Man, you weren't kidding. I would have said that you couldn't track a demon like this, but apparently your dad could." He was silent for another minute, still flipping. "You've got nonparametic statistical overviews, cross-spectrum correlations… Shit, these are omens. Well, I'm impressed."

"Well, can you track it or not?" Sam demanded. They didn't have time to stand around playing verbal footsie with this horndog. She was tired of fucking around doing nothing; she wanted to get out there, actually make some damn progress against this demon for a change.

Dean's hand twitched toward hers, remembering himself at the last minute and not reaching out for her. She got the message, though, loud and clear: _Calm down._

"Yeah, I can do it," Ash said. "But it's going to take me a little time. Uh, give me…" He made a quick mental calculation. "Fifty-one hours. That should do it."

"Awesome." Dean clapped him on the back. "Hey, dude."

Ash turned to look at him, already heading away with the folder in hand. "Yeah?"

"I like the haircut."

Ash grinned and tossed his head, aiming a wink in Sam's direction. "All business up front, party in the back."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Somebody should put a leash on that kid."

Dean bumped her shoulder with his. "Think that's what he was trying to get you to do, hot stuff. He was practically salivating."

"Don't even fucking start." She sighed and turned back to Jo and Ellen, who were watching the exchange with raised brows. "Don't suppose you've got something we can do in the meantime? I'm gonna go stir-crazy if I have to spend one more minute watching Dean work on that car."

"Well, I was saving this for a friend of mine, but…" Ellen grabbed another folder from behind the bar and passed it over to Sam. "See what you make of this."

Dean crowded behind her as she opened it up and started paging through. "The hell is it?"

"Looks like clowns, Sammy," Dean said, an unholy grin starting to spread over his face. "Killer clowns."

"You've got to be kidding me." She twisted around to stare at Dean in disbelief. "Please tell me you're kidding."

Dean grinned at Ellen. "We'll take the case."

* * *

"There's something you're not telling me."

There was a long pause, and then Dean slid out from under the Impala. "Now? You seriously want to talk about this now? I can't even finish what I'm working on first?"

Sam crossed her arms over her chest. Damned if she was going to let him get away with this, a-fucking-gain. He'd been doing this ever since they got back from the clown case, and she was tired of it. "No. Because after you're done with this, you'll find something else. And then something else after that, and so on and so forth."

Dean sat up and put his back against the front grill, probably because even she could loom when someone was flat on their back. Dean was getting into defensive position, ready to withstand the siege. "My baby needs a lot of work."

"And that's why I've been sitting around boning up on exorcisms and protective spells while you're working. But I'm pretty sure you can talk and work at the same time, Dean. In fact, if memory serves it's usually pretty difficult to get you to shut up."

Dean scowled. "That was different. I was trying to get you to learn your way around an engine, not that that ever took. At all." He shook his head sadly. "For a while there after _that_ little lesson, I was sure you had to be adopted."

No way was she letting Dean distract her into an argument over the car. The car wasn't what was important here. "Look, you know what? We all keep secrets. It's kind of the healthy way to live, and whoever says that total honesty in a relationship is important doesn't know what the hell they're talking about. But I can tell you're keeping something from me, something pretty fucking big, judging from the way you've practically been _screaming_ it at me since we took that case."

Dean shifted nervously. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, it's not like I can hear what you're thinking, but you've been broadcasting, 'I have an extremely important secret that I'm not happy about! Ask me how!'" Sam sighed. "You're kind of giving me a headache, to be honest."

A muscle twitched in Dean's jaw. "You've been going in my head, Sammy?"

Did he really just ask- "What? No! Like I said, you've been broadcasting. I've been _trying_ to tune you out, but whatever it is you're chewing over, it's bothering you enough that I _can't._ Okay? I haven't been going in your head."

"Good," Dean said. "See that you don't start."

Sam threw up her hands. "And yet, still not the issue! Dean, seriously, what's wrong? What's so bad that you can't tell _me?_"

Dean's body was pretty much one long line of tension by this point. "It's nothing."

Screw the high ground. She needed to be up close and personal for this. She crouched down till she was looking Dean in the eye and said, "It's pretty clearly not nothing, or it wouldn't be bothering you this bad. What is it? Maybe we can fix it together."

"I'm not sure it's something that can be fixed, Sammy," he said. "Just… let it alone."

"Is it something that Dad said to you?"

"Samantha, _please,_" he said, and she wasn't sure if it was the use of her full name or the honest-to-God _begging_ she heard in his voice, but she stopped. Everything about him was telling her that he was just about ripping himself in two trying to deal with this on his own. It had to be something Dad had said, probably told him to keep it to himself, too. Which meant that it was something to do with her, and Dean was driving himself crazy with the need to tell her, because Dean had always told her _everything._

She nodded, biting her lip. "Okay, Dean," she said slowly, "Okay, I'm not going to push anymore." Relief made him sag, and she added, "Right now, anyway. I'm going to get an answer out of you eventually."

He gave her a lame attempt at his usual grin. "That's what I'm afraid of," he joked weakly. Or maybe just pretended to joke. What the hell was going on in that head of his?

He'd tell her, sooner or later. He wouldn't be able to help himself. Either whatever it was would resolve itself enough for him to spill the beans, or the pressure would cause him to break and turn to her, but either way, he'd tell her. He always did.

She twisted around and settled in next to him, her back pressed against the hot metal of the car. His arm came up almost automatically to wrap around her shoulders, and she nestled in against his side, resting her head on his shoulder. He smelled like sweat and motor oil and steel, and the lump under his t-shirt that was the pendant she'd given him was about three inches away, right over his breastbone. She could see the throb of his pulse in the curve of his throat, and as they sat there in silence, her breathing slowed to match his own.

"So," she said conversationally. "How's the car?"

* * *

Dean was dead quiet after they left Gordon, all the way back to the motel. He dropped the weapons bag on the floor next to the bed and went into the bathroom, shedding clothes as he went. She heard the shower turn on, and his thin hiss of pain as he climbed in underneath the hot water.

Sam just started packing up their stuff in preparation for checkout the next morning. Dean would talk when he was ready, and hopefully the hot shower would improve his mood a little. In the meantime, she might as well do something constructive.

Dean came out eventually, probably after the hot water ran out, and silently pulled on boxers and a t-shirt before crawling into bed. Sam watched him for a long minute, wondering if he was going to talk to her- but no, to all appearances he'd fallen instantly asleep.

Hmm.

She went and took her own shower, making it fast since it was fucking _cold,_ then shaved her legs afterward on the edge of the tub and quickly plaited her wet hair into a braid before wrapping herself in a towel and going back into the room, shoving her shower kit into her duffel. There was a lot of extra room in there, and their laundry bag was getting kind of out of control. They'd have to find a Laundromat tomorrow when they stopped for lunch. In the meantime, she still had one clean pair of jeans left for tomorrow, and snagged Dean's Metallica t-shirt to wear to bed. He always did like to see her wearing his stuff.

Then she crawled in next to Dean and turned out the light. She did a careful sweep under their pillows to make sure the knives were there, checked the nightstand to make sure Dean had left the pistol taped underneath, and only then did she settle in and pull the covers up to her chin. It'd been a long fucking night, and it was only a couple of hours till dawn. They needed all the sleep they could get.

"You ever think about how much Dad didn't tell us?"

Sam twitched, halfway to sleep and jerked back to wakefulness by Dean's voice. So, not really that asleep, after all. "You're talking about this now? What was wrong with the drive back to the motel?"

Dean ignored her and kept expounding. "He never told us about the other hunters. Didn't tell us about Ellen, or the Roadhouse, didn't even bother to tell us when he had something on the demon, just took off and left us- left _me_- to handle things on my own."

Sam rolled over to face him, and found that he was staring up at the ceiling, his face expressionless. "Yeah, but he's always been kind of like that, right? He always taught us what he thought we needed to know and kept his own counsel about the rest. That's just Dad."

"Yeah, I guess." Dean paused. "But did you ever think about what else he didn't tell us?"

Sam blinked, trying to figure out where he was going with this. "Yeah, I guess," she said cautiously. "But then, me and Dad, we were like cats and dogs most of the time. That was just one of things we fought about."

"He raised us to hate the things we hunt, and I mean, I hate 'em. I really do. I didn't even think about it when I killed that vampire back at the mill. Hell, I even enjoyed it."

"You didn't kill Lenore," Sam said, raising up on one elbow to get a better look at his face. "You saw she wasn't evil and you didn't kill her. Hell, you saw Gordon for what he was and you stopped _him_ from killing her. There's no bad there, Dean. Even that one back at the mill, you didn't know. You saw him trying to kill Gordon and you saved his life. There's nothing wrong with that kind of instinct."

"Yeah, it's just…" Dean sighed. "Man, I wish we never took this case. It's just jacked everything up. I dunno what the hell makes sense anymore."

"Me," Sam said, and grinned at him. "That's what partners are for, right?"

Dean still looked troubled. "That's just the thing, Sammy," he said. "I don't know-" And then he stopped.

She waited, and when he didn't seem inclined to finish his sentence, she asked carefully, "Does this have anything to do with what you wouldn't tell me before?"

Dean let out an explosive breath. "Yeah," he said, "yeah, it does, and Dad made me promise I wouldn't tell you but- fuck, I almost spilled the beans to fucking _Gordon_ back at the bar, am I supposed to be able to tell some psycho but not you?" He sat up suddenly, and looked at her fiercely. "Fuck what Dad told me. I don't believe him anyway."

Sam laid one hand on his chest and looked up into his face. "Dean, what did he tell you?"

Dean looked at her, his eyes wild in the light of the neon sign, coming in through the window. "He told me I had to save you."

"What?" Sam leaned away from him. "Save me from what? The demon? Why'd he tell you that? I mean, we already know the demon has plans for me, so obviously we're already on the lookout."

"It gets worse," Dean said. He already looked like he wished he hadn't started talking about it, Sam didn't want to know how it got worse.

"Worse _how?_"

"He told me that if I couldn't save you, I'd have to kill you."

"What the _fuck?_" Sam recoiled away so hard that she almost fell out of bed, and stayed where she was, teetering on the edge of the mattress, staring at Dean and trying to tamp down on the feeling of betrayal that was trying to rise up her throat. "_Kill_ me? Is _that_ what he meant by the demon's plans? He thinks I'm going to go evil?"

"Well he's fucking _wrong_," Dean growled. He didn't reach for her, which told her more than anything else how freaked-out she must look right now. "You're not going to go evil, Sam. I don't believe it, and you better not either."

"But- God, Dean, he must have had a reason to say it. Dad wouldn't just _say_ something like that if he didn't absolutely believe it was true."

"Dad's been wrong before," Dean said. "And he's wrong now. Seriously, Sam, how could you believe he might be right about this? You're about the least likely person to go dark-side out of anybody I know. You feel guilty when bugs fly into the windshield, for Chrissake."

Sam wasn't so sure. Hadn't she let Dad sell his soul, knowing that it would bring Dean back? And she'd had visions of Jess's death for weeks before it actually happened, and she'd gone with Dean anyway, even knowing what might happen. She'd choose Dean over anything. What if it came down to Dean or saving the world? Which would she choose?

Dean grabbed the back of her neck and hauled her back over the expanse of the mattress until she was flush up against him, till he could grab her by the shoulders and look her right in the eye and say, "I don't give a damn what anyone else says. You're Sam, and you're a good person, and that's all that matters. Ever."

She let him hug her tight, like he was trying to smother the doubts out of her with the weight of his body, but she knew it wouldn't work. Their Dad, her Daddy had believed she might need to be killed, to be put down like a rabid dog. How could she possibly not have doubts?

"I love you," Dean whispered, ragged and soft, right into her ear. "I know you better than anyone else on this Earth or off of it, and that includes Dad, and I love you. You're not evil. You don't have it in you."

She choked on her tears and buried her face in Dean's neck. He'd never- oh, he'd told her, one way or another, he'd always let her know, but he'd never just come out and said, not just-

"I love you too," she said. Because of course she did. She always had. But she didn't know how to say it any better than Dean did, sometimes. And if he had that kind of courage, if he could believe in her even after what Dad said, then paying back in the same coin was the very least she could do for him.

"Now we're going to get through this," he said. "You're going to practice with your powers, and we're going to keep hunting, and we will by God figure this out. You hear me?"

"Well yeah, I'm not _deaf,_ Dean," she said, and he chuckled and tugged the end of her braid till she looked up at him.

"Good," he said, and kissed her. And just like every other time, she kissed him back. She couldn't ever help but respond to him. He was Dean.

Later, tucked into bed with the covers up to her chin and most of Dean's limbs wrapped around her like some kind of human octopus, she fell asleep listening to the steady, reassuring beat of his heart. For tonight, at least, all of her doubts were gone.

* * *

"Now _that,_" Dean said, when they'd finished filling in the grave and were packing their things into the trunk, "is what I call a happy ending to this case."

Sam just leaned tiredly against the passenger door and cradled her aching hand. "Dean, a zombie just killed three people, including the dumbass boy who brought her back; I've got a headache worse than any of my visions; and oh yeah, I might have broken my hand. How is that a happy ending?"

"Well, a) we're not dead; b) nobody else died, and we did our best for the budding necromancer, it's not my fault he's a shitty actor; and c) you managed to knock that girl back into her grave and pound that stake through her chest just by _thinking_ about it, which is pretty fucking cool. And if you'll stop whining and get over here, I'll dig out the first aid kit and we can take care of your war wounds, Princess."

"Well, she pissed me off," Sam grumbled, complying, "What with the whole, you know, breaking my hand thing she did."

"It's not just your emotions," Dean said, examining her hand. "You've been practicing a lot harder. Don't think I haven't noticed."

"Yeah, well, since Dad apparently thought I'm going to turn evil, I thought I might as well- _ow!_" she said, as Dean's probing fingers hit a tender spot. "That would be the spot that hurts."

"Yeah, I noticed," he said, his hands becoming even more gentle. She bit her lip as he poked carefully. "Well, it's not broken, but it did get twisted up pretty bad. We'll strap it up for a while, see if it'll heal on its own." He glanced up and smiled. "Good thing you shoot left-handed."

"Gee, that just makes me feel so much better," she said, at her very driest. Dean's smile turned into a grin, and without letting go of her hand, he rummaged through the first-aid kit.

"Here's some pills for your head and hand," he said, carefully pouring out two from the really heavy-duty bottle into the palm of her good hand. She raised an eyebrow at him- they were some of the precious leftovers from their various hospital stays, with no real way to get more since pharmacies were a little harder to break into than your average home or cemetery- but he ignored her, concentrating on getting the brace strapped on without hurting her further.

Oh, well. It wasn't like she ever did any of the driving, anyway. She shrugged and dry-swallowed the pills, making a face at the bitter taste.

"There, good as new," Dean said, finally done with his fiddling. "Or, well, good enough, anyway."

She cautiously wiggled her fingers, and when her hand didn't do more than send up a dull throb in response, grinned at Dean. "Good enough for me."

"Awesome." He packed the kit back up and slid it into his duffel, closing the trunk once he was sure everything was properly packed away. "Hey, you want to grab some dinner or something? Celebrate not being dead?"

His voice was casual. Too casual, and he wasn't looking at her, almost like he had something to hide, and- "Are you asking me on a _date?_"

He ducked his chin and scowled at her, like that was going to distract her from the dark stain of a blush that was spreading along his cheekbones. "What? No."

"You are, you totally are!" she crowed. "Seriously, Dean, _me?_ You're asking _me_ on a date?"

"Maybe," he grumbled defensively. "What's wrong with that, anyway?"

She leaned hipshot against the trunk of the Impala, giving a disbelieving huff of breath. "Well, it's not like you've got to talk me into bed, you know. I think history has proven that I'm still going to sleep with you even if you don't bribe me with beer and steak."

"Give me a little credit, Sammy, there'd be something chocolate in there too." He settled in next to her, his warmth leaching through the denim and leather of their respective sleeves. "What's so wrong with the idea? We grab dinner together all the time."

"We do _everything_ together all the time." His hand came up to toy with the end of her braid, and she realized after a moment that she'd gotten so used to it that she almost hadn't noticed. "A date is something completely different. A date is what you do when you're just getting to know someone. You take them to dinner and buy them drinks and be on your best behavior because you're trying to cram a lifetime of familiarity into a couple hours just so you can talk them into sleeping with you." She sighed and leaned more heavily against him, laying her head against his shoulder. "We've _had_ a lifetime already. We know each other better than anyone ever could."

"Doesn't mean you don't deserve something better once in a while."

She shook her head. "No, don't you get it? There is nothing better. We've already got the real thing."

There was a long pause, and then Dean pressed his cheek against the top of her head. She could feel his smile as he said, "Well, when you put it that way."

She grinned. "Doesn't mean you're not buying me steak."

"Yeah, don't hold your breath."

* * *

"What I don't get is the motive. I mean, the doctor was squeaky-clean. Why would Andy waste him?"

Dean scrunched up the burger wrapper in his hand, giving it a disgusted look. "If it was Andy. You know, one day, I'd love to just sit down and eat something that I didn't have to microwave in a mini-mart."

Sam slowly swiveled her head to stare at him. He stared back, his eyes going wide as he caught her death glare. "What? What'd I say?"

"Dude, enough. Seriously."

"You're the one who's always on my case about eating healthier!"

"I was talking about Andy, you jackass. What do you mean, 'if it was Andy?' That doctor was mind-controlled in front of a bus. Andy Gallagher just happens to have the power of mind control. You do the freakin' math."

"I just don't think the guy's got it in him, is all."

"Oh, for god's sake, Dean." She was abruptly and completely fed up. It had been a long fucking week, a long fucking month, hell, _year,_ and she'd been staying up nights trying to get a handle on the telekinesis, not that she seemed to be getting much better, and she was _tired,_ damn it. And on top of everything, she'd had to stand there while Ash was hitting on her _completely bare-ass naked._ Seriously. She'd faced down demons, ghouls, ghosts, zombies, vampires, and pretty much any other creature of myth and legend that went bump in the night, and that was the worst thing she'd ever done. Hands down. "How the hell would you know? Why are you bending over backwards to defend him, anyway?"

Dean was glaring back at her, now. "Listen, any dude who drives around in a van with a barbarian princess riding a goddamn polar bear isn't too menacing to begin with. And everything we've heard about this guy just makes him sound more harmless. So basically, you're saying he's a killer because he's like you."

"That's not what-" Sam protested, but Dean kept talking like she hadn't even opened her mouth.

"And that's the biggest pile of bullshit I've ever heard. So yeah, I'm defending him. Someone has to, because you are _dead_ wrong about this one."

She bit her lip. "You're the one that told me Dad thought you might have to kill me. Tell me what I'm supposed to think about this guy, Dean. Tell me I'm supposed to believe he's innocent when I know damn well that the demon's got plans for all of us."

"You don't _dare_ throw that back in my face," Dean snapped. "And, by the way? The only person less likely than you to commit cold-blooded murder is that guy. If someone held him up at gunpoint he'd probably offer them a hit of that huge bong of his."

"We kill things all the time, Dean," Sam said. "That's pretty much our entire life."

"Yeah, and when you start kicking puppies and torturing cats for fun, you just met know," Dean said. "You want to go on a guilt trip about what we do, you might as well call cops and soldiers vicious murders, since we're not far off-"

"Andy," Sam said.

"Yeah, we were talking about Andy, and how there's not way in hell he's-"

"No, I meant, _Andy,"_ she said, and then the man himself came up to Dean's open window.

"Shit," Dean said.

It all went downhill from there.

* * *

Sam had driven away from a hundred cases in a hundred small towns in all 48 states of the continental US. She'd left in all sorts of moods- angry, elated, worn, content, depressed, triumphant, ambivalent. She'd been starting to think that she'd been through it all.

She'd never really felt this particular variety of blind panic before, though.

"Stop freaking out over there," Dean said, without looking away from the road. When she glared at him- _she_ was the psychic one in this family, damn it- he gave her a sideways glance and the corner of his mouth curled up in a smug half-smile. "I can practically smell the smoke coming out of your ears."

She crossed her arms over her chest, worry transmuting to annoyance through the special alchemy of being a pain _in the ass_ that Dean had perfected when he about ten. "I don't see why you're so calm about it, anyway."

"Because I was right, and Andy's not a bad guy." His hands on the steering wheel were relaxed. "We're keeping each other's secrets now. It's fine."

"Yeah, right. We know he has mind-control. He knows we're sleeping together _an_ that I have freaky demon powers. I'm not really seeing the even trade, here."

Dean gave her a second glance, this one chiding. "Yeah, and we also know that his twin bother stalked him, killed two people, and tried to kill his girlfriend. And we stood there and watched as Andy shot him in the head."

Sam made a face at him. "You think I'm overreacting, don't you?"

"While I would never be so stupid as to say that to _any_ angry woman, even you, yeah, I think you're maybe freaking out a little more than you should be."

"And it doesn't bother you." To Sam's surprise, she realized her question was genuine. She really wanted to know why Dean was so damn calm about this, when normally freaky demon stuff got him as jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. "He went into your head, stole your car, made you tell him secrets. _Our_ secrets. And you're cool with that."

Dean tapped his fingers restlessly on the steering wheel. "I'm pissed off that he took advantage, sure. But he stopped as soon as he knew us. I'd never try and con another hunter, right? And up until he knew what was going on, we were just a couple of marks to him."

That made sense, she guessed. Explained why Dean got so annoyed at even the _thought_ of her _accidentally_ reading him, but Andy got a free pass for completely fucking with his mind. _And_ taking the Impala for a joyride.

"But the 'tell me the truth' bit. Where you just up and blabbed all about how you were fucking your-" She stopped.

"My what?" Dean asked. He sounded pissed off for the first time, which was less than comforting for Sam. "My _sister_? That's your hang-up, babe, not mine."

She pursed her lips. "You haven't called me that in years."

Derailed, he blinked at her. "What?"

"'Babe.' You haven't called me that since I left for college."

"Yeah, well. You were gone." He hunched his shoulders uncomfortably, then forced them back down again. "And you hated being called Sammy, so." He spread one hand in a helpless gesture. "I stopped."

"I like it," she said. He shot her a confused smile.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, I do." It made her feel like a girlfriend, or more like his partner. Which was, and always would be, just like she'd always be his little sister.

Hey, she dealt with her hang-ups better than he gave her credit for.

"You know, there is a bright side to this case," Dean said after another silent mile rolled out underneath of them, comfortably this time.

She thought about it for a moment. "I got to use my telekinesis to save somebody, that was pretty cool."

Dean grinned. "Yeah, okay, no arguments from me on that one. You pulled that girl off the bride just as sweet as can be, from, what, twenty feet away? Nice going on that one, by the way."

"I thought so." She propped her elbow on the door and then rested her cheek on her hand. "But that wasn't what you were going to say."

"You're not going to turn evil."

She gave him the Eyebrow. "How'd you get that out of _this_ case?"

"Gallagher has what's got to be the most tempting power known to _man,_ and al he was doing with it was getting laid and chasing off some creditors. He shot his only hope for a family to save my life. Maybe that makes him a killer, but hell, it also makes him a damn good man, in my book, anyway."

"Yeah, okay. I get the point, Dean." She slouched a little lower in her seat, looked out the window at all the endless green flashing past. "Sorry, I couldn't be there to save you. Watching your back is pretty much my job."

He reached out blindly and managed to catch the end of her braid on the first try. "You saved Tracey," he said, giving his captured prize a slight tug. "You saved the innocent. That's your first job, always. I can watch my own back."

Her hand came up to cover his and squeezed. "Yeah, but you shouldn't have to."

"I know."


End file.
